DASMI: exchanging, annotating and assessing molecular interaction data.
BACKGROUND
Ever increasing amounts of biological interaction data are being accumulated worldwide, but they are currently not readily accessible to the biologist at a single site. New techniques are required for retrieving, sharing and presenting data spread over the Internet.


RESULTS
We introduce the DASMI system for the dynamic exchange, annotation and assessment of molecular interaction data. DASMI is based on the widely used Distributed Annotation System (DAS) and consists of a data exchange specification, web servers for providing the interaction data and clients for data integration and visualization. The decentralized architecture of DASMI affords the online retrieval of the most recent data from distributed sources and databases. DASMI can also be extended easily by adding new data sources and clients. We describe all DASMI components and demonstrate their use for protein and domain interactions.


BACKGROUND
The DASMI tools are available at http://www.dasmi.de/ and http://ipfam.sanger.ac.uk/graph. The DAS registry and the DAS 1.53E specification is found at http://www.dasregistry.org/.
Blankenburg
Hagen
H
Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Campus E 1.4, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
Finn
Robert D
RD
Prlić
Andreas
A
Jenkinson
Andrew M
AM
Ramírez
Fidel
F
Emig
Dorothea
D
Schelhorn
Sven-Eric
SE
Büch
Joachim
J
Lengauer
Thomas
T
Albrecht
Mario
M
D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020407:Internet; D025941:Protein Interaction Mapping; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface
D011506:Proteins