title: GWASdb: a database for human genetic variants identified by genome-wide association studies.
abstract: Recent advances in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled us to identify thousands of genetic variants (GVs) that are associated with human diseases. As next-generation sequencing technologies become less expensive, more GVs will be discovered in the near future. Existing databases, such as NHGRI GWAS Catalog, collect GVs with only genome-wide level significance. However, many true disease susceptibility loci have relatively moderate P values and are not included in these databases. We have developed GWASdb that contains 20 times more data than the GWAS Catalog and includes less significant GVs (P < 1.0 × 10(-3)) manually curated from the literature. In addition, GWASdb provides comprehensive functional annotations for each GV, including genomic mapping information, regulatory effects (transcription factor binding sites, microRNA target sites and splicing sites), amino acid substitutions, evolution, gene expression and disease associations. Furthermore, GWASdb classifies these GVs according to diseases using Disease-Ontology Lite and Human Phenotype Ontology. It can conduct pathway enrichment and PPI network association analysis for these diseases. GWASdb provides an intuitive, multifunctional database for biologists and clinicians to explore GVs and their functional inferences. It is freely available at http://jjwanglab.org/gwasdb and will be updated frequently.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Mulin Jun
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Panwen
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiaorong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ee Lyn
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.forename: Zhangyong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Meredith
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yeager
authors.forename: Maria P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Pak Chung
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Sham
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Chanock
authors.forename: Junwen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D004194:Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D014584:User-Computer Interface