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Open AccessDatabase

EPIC-DB: a proteomics database for studying Apicomplexan organisms

Carlos J Madrid-Aliste1,2,3 email, Joseph M Dybas1,2,3 email, Ruth Hogue Angeletti1,2,5,8 email, Louis M Weiss1,4,6 email, Kami Kim1,6,7 email, Istvan Simon10 email and Andras Fiser1,2,3,9 email

1Biodefense Proteomics Research Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

2Department of Systems and Computational Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

3Department of Biochemistry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

4Department of Pathology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

5Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

6Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

7Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

8Laboratory for Macromolecular Analysis and Proteomics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

9Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA

10Institute of Enzymology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Karolina ut 29, Budapest 1113, Hungary

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genomics 2009, 10:38doi:10.1186/1471-2164-10-38

Published: 21 January 2009

Abstract

Background

High throughput proteomics experiments are useful for analyzing the protein expression of an organism, identifying the correct gene structure of a genome, or locating possible post-translational modifications within proteins. High throughput methods necessitate publicly accessible and easily queried databases for efficiently and logically storing, displaying, and analyzing the large volume of data.

Description

EPICDB is a publicly accessible, queryable, relational database that organizes and displays experimental, high throughput proteomics data for Toxoplasma gondii and Cryptosporidium parvum. Along with detailed information on mass spectrometry experiments, the database also provides antibody experimental results and analysis of functional annotations, comparative genomics, and aligned expressed sequence tag (EST) and genomic open reading frame (ORF) sequences. The database contains all available alternative gene datasets for each organism, which comprises a complete theoretical proteome for the respective organism, and all data is referenced to these sequences. The database is structured around clusters of protein sequences, which allows for the evaluation of redundancy, protein prediction discrepancies, and possible splice variants. The database can be expanded to include genomes of other organisms for which proteome-wide experimental data are available.

Conclusion

EPICDB is a comprehensive database of genome-wide T. gondii and C. parvum proteomics data and incorporates many features that allow for the analysis of the entire proteomes and/or annotation of specific protein sequences. EPICDB is complementary to other -genomics- databases of these organisms by offering complete mass spectrometry analysis on a comprehensive set of all available protein sequences.


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