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Published on January 7, 2022
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DDInter: an online drug-drug interaction database towards improving clinical decision-making and patient safety.

Authors: Xiong G, Yang Z, Yi J, Wang N, Wang L, Zhu H, Wu C, Lu A, Chen X, Liu S, Hou T, Cao D

Abstract: Drug-drug interaction (DDI) can trigger many adverse effects in patients and has emerged as a threat to medicine and public health. Despite the continuous information accumulation of clinically significant DDIs, there are few open-access knowledge systems dedicated to the curation of DDI associations. To facilitate the clinicians to screen for dangerous drug combinations and improve health systems, we present DDInter, a curated DDI database with comprehensive data, practical medication guidance, intuitive function interface, and powerful visualization to the scientific community. Currently, DDInter contains about 0.24M DDI associations connecting 1833 approved drugs (1972 entities). Each drug is annotated with basic chemical and pharmacological information and its interaction network. For DDI associations, abundant and professional annotations are provided, including severity, mechanism description, strategies for managing potential side effects, alternative medications, etc. The drug entities and interaction entities are efficiently cross-linked. In addition to basic query and browsing, the prescription checking function is developed to facilitate clinicians to decide whether drugs combinations can be used safely. It can also be used for informatics-based DDI investigation and evaluation of other prediction frameworks. We hope that DDInter will prove useful in improving clinical decision-making and patient safety. DDInter is freely available, without registration, at http://ddinter.scbdd.com/.
Published on January 7, 2022
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VARIDT 2.0: structural variability of drug transporter.

Authors: Fu T, Li F, Zhang Y, Yin J, Qiu W, Li X, Liu X, Xin W, Wang C, Yu L, Gao J, Zheng Q, Zeng S, Zhu F

Abstract: The structural variability data of drug transporter (DT) are key for research on precision medicine and rational drug use. However, these valuable data are not sufficiently covered by the available databases. In this study, a major update of VARIDT (a database previously constructed to provide DTs' variability data) was thus described. First, the experimentally resolved structures of all DTs reported in the original VARIDT were discovered from PubMed and Protein Data Bank. Second, the structural variability data of each DT were collected by literature review, which included: (a) mutation-induced spatial variations in folded state, (b) difference among DT structures of human and model organisms, (c) outward/inward-facing DT conformations and (d) xenobiotics-driven alterations in the 3D complexes. Third, for those DTs without experimentally resolved structural variabilities, homology modeling was further applied as well-established protocol to enrich such valuable data. As a result, 145 mutation-induced spatial variations of 42 DTs, 1622 inter-species structures originating from 292 DTs, 118 outward/inward-facing conformations belonging to 59 DTs, and 822 xenobiotics-regulated structures in complex with 57 DTs were updated to VARIDT (https://idrblab.org/varidt/ and http://varidt.idrblab.net/). All in all, the newly collected structural variabilities will be indispensable for explaining drug sensitivity/selectivity, bridging preclinical research with clinical trial, revealing the mechanism underlying drug-drug interaction, and so on.
Published on January 7, 2022
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NP-MRD: the Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database.

Authors: Wishart DS, Sayeeda Z, Budinski Z, Guo A, Lee BL, Berjanskii M, Rout M, Peters H, Dizon R, Mah R, Torres-Calzada C, Hiebert-Giesbrecht M, Varshavi D, Varshavi D, Oler E, Allen D, Cao X, Gautam V, Maras A, Poynton EF, Tavangar P, Yang V, van Santen JA, Ghosh R, Sarma S, Knutson E, Sullivan V, Jystad AM, Renslow R, Sumner LW, Linington RG, Cort JR

Abstract: The Natural Products Magnetic Resonance Database (NP-MRD) is a comprehensive, freely available electronic resource for the deposition, distribution, searching and retrieval of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data on natural products, metabolites and other biologically derived chemicals. NMR spectroscopy has long been viewed as the 'gold standard' for the structure determination of novel natural products and novel metabolites. NMR is also widely used in natural product dereplication and the characterization of biofluid mixtures (metabolomics). All of these NMR applications require large collections of high quality, well-annotated, referential NMR spectra of pure compounds. Unfortunately, referential NMR spectral collections for natural products are quite limited. It is because of the critical need for dedicated, open access natural product NMR resources that the NP-MRD was funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). Since its launch in 2020, the NP-MRD has grown quickly to become the world's largest repository for NMR data on natural products and other biological substances. It currently contains both structural and NMR data for nearly 41,000 natural product compounds from >7400 different living species. All structural, spectroscopic and descriptive data in the NP-MRD is interactively viewable, searchable and fully downloadable in multiple formats. Extensive hyperlinks to other databases of relevance are also provided. The NP-MRD also supports community deposition of NMR assignments and NMR spectra (1D and 2D) of natural products and related meta-data. The deposition system performs extensive data enrichment, automated data format conversion and spectral/assignment evaluation. Details of these database features, how they are implemented and plans for future upgrades are also provided. The NP-MRD is available at https://np-mrd.org.
Published on January 7, 2022
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The IUPHAR/BPS guide to PHARMACOLOGY in 2022: curating pharmacology for COVID-19, malaria and antibacterials.

Authors: Harding SD, Armstrong JF, Faccenda E, Southan C, Alexander SPH, Davenport AP, Pawson AJ, Spedding M, Davies JA

Abstract: The IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (GtoPdb; www.guidetopharmacology.org) is an open-access, expert-curated database of molecular interactions between ligands and their targets. We describe expansion in content over nine database releases made during the last two years, which has focussed on three main areas of infection. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a major impact on health worldwide. GtoPdb has sought to support the wider research community to understand the pharmacology of emerging drug targets for SARS-CoV-2 as well as potential targets in the host to block viral entry and reduce the adverse effects of infection in patients with COVID-19. We describe how the database rapidly evolved to include a new family of Coronavirus proteins. Malaria remains a global threat to half the population of the world. Our database content continues to be enhanced through our collaboration with Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) on the IUPHAR/MMV Guide to MALARIA PHARMACOLOGY (www.guidetomalariapharmacology.org). Antibiotic resistance is also a growing threat to global health. In response, we have extended our coverage of antibacterials in partnership with AntibioticDB.
Published on January 7, 2022
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Multiple Novel Traits without Immediate Benefits Originate in Bacteria Evolving on Single Antibiotics.

Authors: Karve S, Wagner A

Abstract: How new traits originate in evolution is a fundamental question of evolutionary biology. When such traits arise, they can either be immediately beneficial in their environment of origin, or they may become beneficial only in a future environment. Compared to immediately beneficial novel traits, novel traits without immediate benefits remain poorly studied. Here we use experimental evolution to study novel traits that are not immediately beneficial but that allow bacteria to survive in new environments. Specifically, we evolved multiple E. coli populations in five antibiotics with different mechanisms of action, and then determined their ability to grow in more than 200 environments that are different from the environment in which they evolved. Our populations evolved viability in multiple environments that contain not just clinically relevant antibiotics, but a broad range of antimicrobial molecules, such as surfactants, organic and inorganic salts, nucleotide analogues and pyridine derivatives. Genome sequencing of multiple evolved clones shows that pleiotropic mutations are important for the origin of these novel traits. Our experiments, which lasted fewer than 250 generations, demonstrate that evolution can readily create an enormous reservoir of latent traits in microbial populations. These traits can facilitate adaptive evolution in a changing world.
Published on January 7, 2022
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Regeneration Roadmap: database resources for regenerative biology.

Authors: Kang W, Jin T, Zhang T, Ma S, Yan H, Liu Z, Ji Z, Cai Y, Wang S, Song M, Ren J, Hu B, Zhou Q, Zhang W, Qu J, Bao Y, Liu GH

Abstract: Regeneration plays an instrumental role in biological development and damage repair by constructing and replacing cells, tissues, and organs. Since regenerative capacity declines with age, promoting regeneration is heralded as a potential strategy for delaying aging. On this premise, mechanisms that regulate regeneration have been extensively studied across species and in different tissues. However, an open and comprehensive database collecting and standardizing the abundant data generated in regeneration research, such as high-throughput sequencing data, remains to be developed. In this work, we constructed Regeneration Roadmap to systematically and comprehensively collect such information over 2.38 million data entries across 11 species and 36 tissues, including regeneration-related genes, bulk and single-cell transcriptomics, epigenomics, and pharmacogenomics data. In this database, users can explore regulatory and expression changes of regeneration-associated genes in different species and tissues. Regeneration Roadmap provides the research community with a long-awaited and valuable data resource featuring convenient computing and visualizing tools, which is publicly available at https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/regeneration/index.
Published on January 7, 2022
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Identification of vaccine and drug targets in Shigella dysenteriae sd197 using reverse vaccinology approach.

Authors: Jalal K, Abu-Izneid T, Khan K, Abbas M, Hayat A, Bawazeer S, Uddin R

Abstract: Shigellosis is characterized as diarrheal disease that causes a high mortality rate especially in children, elderly and immunocompromised patients. More recently, the World Health Organization advised safe vaccine designing against shigellosis due to the emergence of Shigella dysenteriae resistant strains. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify novel drug targets as well as the design of the potential vaccine candidates and chimeric vaccine models against Shigella dysenteriae. A computational based Reverse Vaccinology along with subtractive genomics analysis is one of the robust approaches used for the prioritization of drug targets and vaccine candidates through direct screening of genome sequence assemblies. Herein, a successfully designed peptide-based novel highly antigenic chimeric vaccine candidate against Shigella dysenteriae sd197 strain is proposed. The study resulted in six epitopes from outer membrane WP_000188255.1 (Fe (3+) dicitrate transport protein FecA) that ultimately leads to the construction of twelve vaccine models. Moreover, V9 construct was found to be highly immunogenic, non-toxic, non-allergenic, highly antigenic, and most stable in terms of molecular docking and simulation studies against six HLAs and TLRS/MD complex. So far, this protein and multiepitope have never been characterized as vaccine targets against Shigella dysenteriae. The current study proposed that V9 could be a significant vaccine candidate against shigellosis and to ascertain that further experiments may be applied by the scientific community focused on shigellosis.
Published on January 7, 2022
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IID 2021: towards context-specific protein interaction analyses by increased coverage, enhanced annotation and enrichment analysis.

Authors: Kotlyar M, Pastrello C, Ahmed Z, Chee J, Varyova Z, Jurisica I

Abstract: Improved bioassays have significantly increased the rate of identifying new protein-protein interactions (PPIs), and the number of detected human PPIs has greatly exceeded early estimates of human interactome size. These new PPIs provide a more complete view of disease mechanisms but precise understanding of how PPIs affect phenotype remains a challenge. It requires knowledge of PPI context (e.g. tissues, subcellular localizations), and functional roles, especially within pathways and protein complexes. The previous IID release focused on PPI context, providing networks with comprehensive tissue, disease, cellular localization, and druggability annotations. The current update adds developmental stages to the available contexts, and provides a way of assigning context to PPIs that could not be previously annotated due to insufficient data or incompatibility with available context categories (e.g. interactions between membrane and cytoplasmic proteins). This update also annotates PPIs with conservation across species, directionality in pathways, membership in large complexes, interaction stability (i.e. stable or transient), and mutation effects. Enrichment analysis is now available for all annotations, and includes multiple options; for example, context annotations can be analyzed with respect to PPIs or network proteins. In addition to tabular view or download, IID provides online network visualization. This update is available at http://ophid.utoronto.ca/iid.
Published on January 7, 2022
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FusionGDB 2.0: fusion gene annotation updates aided by deep learning.

Authors: Kim P, Tan H, Liu J, Lee H, Jung H, Kumar H, Zhou X

Abstract: A knowledgebase of the systematic functional annotation of fusion genes is critical for understanding genomic breakage context and developing therapeutic strategies. FusionGDB is a unique functional annotation database of human fusion genes and has been widely used for studies with diverse aims. In this study, we report fusion gene annotation updates aided by deep learning (FusionGDB 2.0) available at https://compbio.uth.edu/FusionGDB2/. FusionGDB 2.0 has substantial updates of contents such as up-to-date human fusion genes, fusion gene breakage tendency score with FusionAI deep learning model based on 20 kb DNA sequence around BP, investigation of overlapping between fusion breakpoints with 44 human genomic features across five cellular role's categories, transcribed chimeric sequence and following open reading frame analysis with coding potential based on deep learning approach with Ribo-seq read features, and rigorous investigation of the protein feature retention of individual fusion partner genes in the protein level. Among approximately 102k fusion genes, about 15k kept their ORF as In-frames, which is two times compared to the previous version, FusionGDB. FusionGDB 2.0 will be used as the reference knowledgebase of fusion gene annotations. FusionGDB 2.0 provides eight categories of annotations and it will be helpful for diverse human genomic studies.
Published on January 7, 2022
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NCATS Inxight Drugs: a comprehensive and curated portal for translational research.

Authors: Siramshetty VB, Grishagin I, Nguyen EthT, Peryea T, Skovpen Y, Stroganov O, Katzel D, Sheils T, Jadhav A, Mathe EA, Southall NT

Abstract: The United States has a complex regulatory scheme for marketing drugs. Understanding drug regulatory status is a daunting task that requires integrating data from many sources from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), US government publications, and other processes related to drug development. At NCATS, we created Inxight Drugs (https://drugs.ncats.io), a web resource that attempts to address this challenge in a systematic manner. NCATS Inxight Drugs incorporates and unifies a wealth of data, including those supplied by the FDA and from independent public sources. The database offers a substantial amount of manually curated literature data unavailable from other sources. Currently, the database contains 125 036 product ingredients, including 2566 US approved drugs, 6242 marketed drugs, and 9684 investigational drugs. All substances are rigorously defined according to the ISO 11238 standard to comply with existing regulatory standards for unique drug substance identification. A special emphasis was placed on capturing manually curated and referenced data on treatment modalities and semantic relationships between substances. A supplementary resource 'Novel FDA Drug Approvals' features regulatory details of newly approved FDA drugs. The database is regularly updated using NCATS Stitcher data integration tool that automates data aggregation and supports full data access through a RESTful API.