title: PathCase-SB architecture and database design.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Integration of metabolic pathways resources and regulatory metabolic network models, and deploying new tools on the integrated platform can help perform more effective and more efficient systems biology research on understanding the regulation in metabolic networks. Therefore, the tasks of (a) integrating under a single database environment regulatory metabolic networks and existing models, and (b) building tools to help with modeling and analysis are desirable and intellectually challenging computational tasks.
  
  
  METHODS
  PathCase Systems Biology (PathCase-SB) is built and released. The PathCase-SB database provides data and API for multiple user interfaces and software tools. The current PathCase-SB system provides a database-enabled framework and web-based computational tools towards facilitating the development of kinetic models for biological systems. PathCase-SB aims to integrate data of selected biological data sources on the web (currently, BioModels database and KEGG), and to provide more powerful and/or new capabilities via the new web-based integrative framework. This paper describes architecture and database design issues encountered in PathCase-SB's design and implementation, and presents the current design of PathCase-SB's architecture and database.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  PathCase-SB architecture and database provide a highly extensible and scalable environment with easy and fast (real-time) access to the data in the database. PathCase-SB itself is already being used by researchers across the world.
authors: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
authors: Ali
authors: A
authors: Cakmak
authors: Xinjian
authors: X
authors: Qi
authors: Sarp A
authors: SA
authors: Coskun
authors: Mitali
authors: M
authors: Das
authors: En
authors: E
authors: Cheng
authors: A Ercument
authors: AE
authors: Cicek
authors: Nicola
authors: N
authors: Lai
authors: Gultekin
authors: G
authors: Ozsoyoglu
authors: Z Meral
authors: ZM
authors: Ozsoyoglu
mesh_terms: D016208:Databases, Factual; D006019:Glycolysis / Q000502:physiology; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways; D008954:Models, Biological; D012984:Software; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods