Publication of nuclear magnetic resonance experimental data with semantic web technology and the application thereof to biomedical research of proteins.

BACKGROUND

The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic data for biological macromolecules archived at the BioMagResBank (BMRB) provide a rich resource of biophysical information at atomic resolution. The NMR data archived in NMR-STAR ASCII format have been implemented in a relational database. However, it is still fairly difficult for users to retrieve data from the NMR-STAR files or the relational database in association with data from other biological databases.

FINDINGS

To enhance the interoperability of the BMRB database, we present a full conversion of BMRB entries to two standard structured data formats, XML and RDF, as common open representations of the NMR-STAR data. Moreover, a SPARQL endpoint has been deployed. The described case study demonstrates that a simple query of the SPARQL endpoints of the BMRB, UniProt, and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), can be used in NMR and structure-based analysis of proteins combined with information of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and their phenotypes.

CONCLUSIONS

We have developed BMRB/XML and BMRB/RDF and demonstrate their use in performing a federated SPARQL query linking the BMRB to other databases through standard semantic web technologies. This will facilitate data exchange across diverse information resources.