u-CARE: user-friendly Comprehensive Antibiotic resistance Repository of Escherichia coli.
OBJECTIVE
Despite medical advancements, Escherichia coli-associated infections remain a major public health concern and although an abundant information about E. coli and its antibiotic resistance mechanisms is available, no effective tool exists that integrates gene and genomic data in context to drug resistance, thus raising a need to develop a repository that facilitates integration and assimilation of factors governing drug resistance in E. coli.


METHODS
User-friendly Comprehensive Antibiotic resistance Repository of Escherichia coli (u-CARE) is a manually curated catalogue of 52 antibiotics with reported resistance, 107 genes, transcription factors and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) involved in multiple drug resistance of this pathogen. Each gene page provides detailed information about its resistance mechanisms, while antibiotic page consists of summary, chemical description and structural descriptors with links to external public databases like GO, CDD, DEG, Ecocyc, KEGG, Drug Bank, PubChem and UniProt. Moreover, the database integrates this reductive information to holistic data such as strain-specific and segment-specific pathogenic islands and operons. In addition, the database offers rich user interface for the visualisation and retrieval of information using various search criteria such as sequence, keyword, image and class search.


CONCLUSIONS
u-CARE is aimed to cater to the needs of researchers working in the field of antimicrobial drug resistance with minimal knowledge of bioinformatics. This database is also intended as a guide book to medical practitioners to avoid use of antibiotics against which resistance has already been reported in E. coli. The database is available from: http://www.e-bioinformatics.net/ucare.
Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, JSBB, SHIATS Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Saurav B
SB
Saha
Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, JSBB, SHIATS Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Vishwas
V
Uttam
Clinical Vaccine R&D Center, Chonnam National University Hwasun Hospital, Jeonnam, South Korea.
Vivek
V
Verma
D022126:Access to Information; D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D003196:Computer Graphics; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D024881:Drug Resistance, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity; D004927:Escherichia coli Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000235:genetics / Q000382:microbiology; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D009154:Mutation; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D014584:User-Computer Interface
D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE; BACTERIOLOGY; E COLI; MEDICAL INFORMATICS; MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY