- Article -
| In Silico Biology 1, 0012 (1998); ©1998, Bioinformation Systems e.V. |
A Pathway Finding System for the Cell Signaling Networks Database
Takako Takai-Igarashi* and Tsuguchika Kaminuma
Division of Chem-Bio Informatics, National Institute of Health Sciences, 1-18-1, Kamiyoga, Setagaya, Tokyo 158, Japan
* To whom correspondence should be addressed
E-mail:
E-mail: taka@nihs.go.jp
Edited by E. Wingender; received May 25, 1998; revised September 18, 1998; accepted September 24, 1998
Abstract
We report on a knowledge-based pathway-finding system that builds on the cell-signaling networks database, CSNDB, which we developed previously. This new system, PaF-CSNDB, uses a general inference engine to apply rules for finding and coupling pathways between or around specific biomolecules from the CSNDB database. We show how PaF-CSNDB finds relationships in a large but fragmented collection of cell-signaling knowledge by filtering out and composing together those sections of pathways specified from an extensive and complex set of binary or pair-wise cell-signaling reactions. The system can be accessed over the World Wide Web.
Key words: cellular signal transduction, knowledge-based expert system shell, pathway representation