Disease, Models, Variants and Altered Pathways —Journeying RGD Through the Magnifying Glass

Publication date: 2016 Source:Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, Volume 14 Author(s): Victoria Petri, G. Thomas Hayman, Marek Tutaj, Jennifer R. Smith, Stan Laulederkind, Shur-Jen Wang, Rajni Nigam, Jeff De Pons, Mary Shimoyama, Melinda R. Dwinell Understanding the pathogenesis of disease is instrumental in delineating its progression mechanisms and for envisioning ways to counteract it. In the process, animal models represent invaluable tools for identifying disease-related loci and their genetic components. Amongst them, the laboratory rat is used extensively in the study of many conditions and disorders. The Rat Genome Database (RGD—http://rgd.mcw.edu) has been established to house rat genetic, genomic and phenotypic data. Since its inception, it has continually expanded the depth and breadth of its content. Currently, in addition to rat genes, QTLs and strains, RGD houses mouse and human genes and QTLs and offers pertinent associated data, acquired through manual literature curation and imported via pipelines. A collection of controlled vocabularies and ontologies is employed for the standardized extraction and provision of biological data. The vocabularies/ontologies allow the capture of disease and phenotype associations of rat strains and QTLs, as well as disease and pathway associations of rat, human and mouse genes. A suite of tools enables the retrieval, manipulation, viewing and analysis of data. Genes associated with part...
Source: Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal - Category: Biotechnology Source Type: research