BMC Neuroscience

official impact factor 3.09
Search for
Advanced search
BMC Neuroscience
Tools
Share this article
Open Access Database

A7DB: a relational database for mutational, physiological and pharmacological data related to the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Steven D Buckingham1,2, Luanda Pym2, Andrew K Jones2, Laurence Brown2, Mark SP Sansom1, David B Sattelle2 and Philip C Biggin1*

Author Affiliations

1 Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QU. UK

2 MRC Functional Genetics Unit, Department of Human Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QX. UK

For all author emails, please log on.

BMC Neuroscience 2005, 6:2 doi:10.1186/1471-2202-6-2

Published: 20 January 2005

Abstract

Background

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are pentameric proteins that are important drug targets for a variety of diseases including Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and various forms of epilepsy. One of the most intensively studied nAChR subunits in recent years has been α7. This subunit can form functional homomeric pentamers (α7)5, which can make interpretation of physiological and structural data much simpler. The growing amount of structural, pharmacological and physiological data for these receptors indicates the need for a dedicated and accurate database to provide a means to access this information in a coherent manner.

Description

A7DB http://www.lgics.org/a7db/ webcite is a new relational database of manually curated experimental physiological data associated with the α7 nAChR. It aims to store as much of the pharmacology, physiology and structural data pertaining to the α7 nAChR. The data is accessed via web interface that allows a user to search the data in multiple ways: 1) a simple text query 2) an incremental query builder 3) an interactive query builder and 4) a file-based uploadable query. It currently holds more than 460 separately reported experiments on over 85 mutations.

Conclusions

A7DB will be a useful tool to molecular biologists and bioinformaticians not only working on the α7 receptor family of proteins but also in the more general context of nicotinic receptor modelling. Furthermore it sets a precedent for expansion with the inclusion of all nicotinic receptor families and eventually all cys-loop receptor families.