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Baltoumas FA, Zafeiropoulou S, Karatzas E, Koutrouli M, Thanati F, Voutsadaki K, Gkonta M, Hotova J, Kasionis I, Hatzis P, Pavlopoulos GA. Biomolecule and Bioentity Interaction Databases in Systems Biology: A Comprehensive Review. Biomolecules 2021; 11:1245. [PMID: 34439912 PMCID: PMC8391349 DOI: 10.3390/biom11081245] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2021] [Revised: 08/16/2021] [Accepted: 08/18/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Technological advances in high-throughput techniques have resulted in tremendous growth of complex biological datasets providing evidence regarding various biomolecular interactions. To cope with this data flood, computational approaches, web services, and databases have been implemented to deal with issues such as data integration, visualization, exploration, organization, scalability, and complexity. Nevertheless, as the number of such sets increases, it is becoming more and more difficult for an end user to know what the scope and focus of each repository is and how redundant the information between them is. Several repositories have a more general scope, while others focus on specialized aspects, such as specific organisms or biological systems. Unfortunately, many of these databases are self-contained or poorly documented and maintained. For a clearer view, in this article we provide a comprehensive categorization, comparison and evaluation of such repositories for different bioentity interaction types. We discuss most of the publicly available services based on their content, sources of information, data representation methods, user-friendliness, scope and interconnectivity, and we comment on their strengths and weaknesses. We aim for this review to reach a broad readership varying from biomedical beginners to experts and serve as a reference article in the field of Network Biology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fotis A. Baltoumas
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Sofia Zafeiropoulou
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Evangelos Karatzas
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Mikaela Koutrouli
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
- Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Foteini Thanati
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Kleanthi Voutsadaki
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Maria Gkonta
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Joana Hotova
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Ioannis Kasionis
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
| | - Pantelis Hatzis
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
- Center for New Biotechnologies and Precision Medicine, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece
| | - Georgios A. Pavlopoulos
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, 16672 Vari, Greece; (S.Z.); (E.K.); (M.K.); (F.T.); (K.V.); (M.G.); (J.H.); (I.K.); (P.H.)
- Center for New Biotechnologies and Precision Medicine, School of Medicine, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece
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Karatzas E, Gkonta M, Hotova J, Baltoumas FA, Kontou PI, Bobotsis CJ, Bagos PG, Pavlopoulos GA. VICTOR: A visual analytics web application for comparing cluster sets. Comput Biol Med 2021; 135:104557. [PMID: 34139436 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104557] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2021] [Revised: 06/04/2021] [Accepted: 06/04/2021] [Indexed: 01/21/2023]
Abstract
Clustering is the process of grouping different data objects based on similar properties. Clustering has applications in various case studies from several fields such as graph theory, image analysis, pattern recognition, statistics and others. Nowadays, there are numerous algorithms and tools able to generate clustering results. However, different algorithms or parameterizations may produce quite dissimilar cluster sets. In this way, the user is often forced to manually filter and compare these results in order to decide which of them generate the ideal clusters. To automate this process, in this study, we present VICTOR, the first fully interactive and dependency-free visual analytics web application which allows the visual comparison of the results of various clustering algorithms. VICTOR can handle multiple cluster set results simultaneously and compare them using ten different metrics. Clustering results can be filtered and compared to each other with the use of data tables or interactive heatmaps, bar plots, correlation networks, sankey and circos plots. We demonstrate VICTOR's functionality using three examples. In the first case, we compare five different network clustering algorithms on a Yeast protein-protein interaction dataset whereas in the second example, we test four different parameters of the MCL clustering algorithm on the same dataset. Finally, as a third example, we compare four different meta-analyses with hierarchically clustered differentially expressed genes found to be involved in myocardial infarction. VICTOR is available at http://victor.pavlopouloslab.info or http://bib.fleming.gr:3838/VICTOR.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evangelos Karatzas
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, BSRC "Alexander Fleming", Vari, Greece.
| | - Maria Gkonta
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, BSRC "Alexander Fleming", Vari, Greece; Department of Biology, University of Athens, Greece
| | - Joana Hotova
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, BSRC "Alexander Fleming", Vari, Greece; Department of Biology, University of Athens, Greece
| | - Fotis A Baltoumas
- Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, BSRC "Alexander Fleming", Vari, Greece
| | - Panagiota I Kontou
- Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, University of Thessaly, Lamia, Greece
| | | | - Pantelis G Bagos
- Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, University of Thessaly, Lamia, Greece
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