Cytoscape WikiPresenter: Gary Bader, University of Toronto, Canada
Title: Pathway Commons plugin
Abstract:
Biological pathways represent knowledge about molecules, processes and their interactions, the cellular wiring diagram. Biological researchers use pathway maps to design and analyze experiments and to make predictions about the behavior of biological systems. Pathway information is, unfortunately, extremely difficult for biologists to use in its current fragmented and incomplete state. We plan to overcome this roadblock to biological research by developing the Pathway Commons Research Resource (http://www.pathwaycommons.org). Pathway Commons benefits researchers as a convenient single point of access to diverse biological pathway information from public sources, translated to the common BioPAX data language (http://www.biopax.org). To provide this service, we will aggregate datasets from many existing pathway databases; translate, store, validate, index, integrate, hyperlink and maintain the information for maximum quality access; freely distribute pathway information to the scientific public, both academic and commercial; and, provide open-source end user software for pathway browsing and analysis.