Uniformly curated signaling pathways reveal tissue-specific cross-talks and support drug target discovery.
BACKGROUND
Signaling pathways control a large variety of cellular processes. However, currently, even within the same database signaling pathways are often curated at different levels of detail. This makes comparative and cross-talk analyses difficult.


RESULTS
We present SignaLink, a database containing eight major signaling pathways from Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster and humans. Based on 170 review and approximately 800 research articles, we have compiled pathways with semi-automatic searches and uniform, well-documented curation rules. We found that in humans any two of the eight pathways can cross-talk. We quantified the possible tissue- and cancer-specific activity of cross-talks and found pathway-specific expression profiles. In addition, we identified 327 proteins relevant for drug target discovery.


CONCLUSIONS
We provide a novel resource for comparative and cross-talk analyses of signaling pathways. The identified multi-pathway and tissue-specific cross-talks contribute to the understanding of the signaling complexity in health and disease, and underscore its importance in network-based drug target selection.


BACKGROUND
http://SignaLink.org.
Korcsmáros
Tamás
T
Department of Genetics, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.
Farkas
Illés J
IJ
Szalay
Máté S
MS
Rovó
Petra
P
Fazekas
Dávid
D
Spiró
Zoltán
Z
Böde
Csaba
C
Lenti
Katalin
K
Vellai
Tibor
T
Csermely
Péter
P
D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000378:metabolism; D030562:Databases, Protein; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000378:metabolism; D055808:Drug Discovery; D006801:Humans; D047908:Intracellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors / Q000378:metabolism*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000187:drug effects
D047908:Intracellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins