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The Dragon Exploration System for Toxicants and Fertility (DESTAF) is a publicly available resource which enables researchers to efficiently explore both known and potentially novel information and associations in the field of reproductive toxicology. To create DESTAF we used data from the literature (including over 10 500 PubMed abstracts), several publicly available biomedical repositories, and specialized, curated dictionaries. DESTAF has an interface designed to facilitate rapid assessment of the key associations between relevant concepts, allowing for a more in-depth exploration of information based on different gene/protein-, enzyme/metabolite-, toxin/chemical-, disease- or anatomically centric perspectives. As a special feature, DESTAF allows for the creation and initial testing of potentially new association hypotheses that suggest links between biological entities identified through the database. DESTAF, along with a PDF manual, can be found at http://cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/destaf . It is free to academic and non-commercial users and will be updated quarterly.

Background Esophageal cancer ranks eighth in order of cancer occurrence. Its lethality primarily stems from inability to detect the disease during the early organ-confined stage and the lack of effective therapies for advanced-stage disease. Moreover, the understanding of molecular processes involved in esophageal cancer is not complete, hampering the development of efficient diagnostics and therapy. Efforts made by the scientific community to improve the survival rate of esophageal cancer have resulted in a wealth of scattered information that is difficult to find and not easily amendable to data-mining. To reduce this gap and to complement available cancer related bioinformatic resources, we have developed a comprehensive database (Dragon Database of Genes Implicated in Esophageal Cancer) with esophageal cancer related information, as an integrated knowledge database aimed at representing a gateway to esophageal cancer related data. Description Manually curated 529 genes differentially expressed in EC are contained in the database. We extracted and analyzed the promoter regions of these genes and complemented gene-related information with transcription factors that potentially control them. We further, precompiled text-mined and data-mined reports about each of these genes to allow for easy exploration of information about associations of EC-implicated genes with other human genes and proteins, metabolites and enzymes, toxins, chemicals with pharmacological effects, disease concepts and human anatomy. The resulting database, DDEC, has a useful feature to display potential associations that are rarely reported and thus difficult to identify. Moreover, DDEC enables inspection of potentially new 'association hypotheses' generated based on the precompiled reports. Conclusion We hope that this resource will serve as a useful complement to the existing public resources and as a good starting point for researchers and physicians interested in EC genetics. DDEC is freely accessible to academic and non-profit users at http://apps.sanbi.ac.za/ddec/. DDEC will be updated twice a year.

Background Sodium channels are heteromultimeric, integral membrane proteins that belong to a superfamily of ion channels. The mutations in genes encoding for sodium channel proteins have been linked with several inherited genetic disorders such as febrile epilepsy, Brugada syndrome, ventricular fibrillation, long QT syndrome, or channelopathy associated insensitivity to pain. In spite of these significant effects that sodium channel proteins/genes could have on human health, there is no publicly available resource focused on sodium channels that would support exploration of the sodium channel related information. Results We report here Dragon Database for Exploration of Sodium Channels in Human (DDESC), which provides comprehensive information related to sodium channels regarding different entities, such as "genes and proteins", "metabolites and enzymes", "toxins", "chemicals with pharmacological effects", "disease concepts", "human anatomy", "pathways and pathway reactions" and their potential links. DDESC is compiled based on text- and data-mining. It allows users to explore potential associations between different entities related to sodium channels in human, as well as to automatically generate novel hypotheses. Conclusion DDESC is first publicly available resource where the information related to sodium channels in human can be explored at different levels. This database is freely accessible for academic and non-profit users via the worldwide web http://apps.sanbi.ac.za/ddesc.