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GSF Munich
Contact m@wjst.de
The Asthma Gene Database (http://cooke.gsf.de/asthmagen) is still the only inventory in the internet for a complex genetic disease. The main advantage compared to the more narrative approache of a printed review or a handbook article is the exact and up-to-date description of all known linkages and associations with specific polymorphisms. This is probably the main reason that since the first description in this journal [1] there are now 681 active address entries by users all over the world. Approximately half of them are coming from genomics and pharmaceutical companies and the other half from major academical institutions. Daily visits ranged from 1 to 35 with an average of 5,9 visits per day. On average 10 pages were retrieved per visit. The entry screen has been personalized and shows updates since the last visit of the user. The linkage section contains now four full datasets of genome scans. Three other datasets are already queued for release after the corresponding papers have been appeared in print. Also mutation studies of 22 more genes are prepared for immediate release. The database relies at present on 529 published papers (http://cooke.gsf.de/asthmagen/statistics/statistics.cfm) totalling 160 single linkage studies with 12.105 data points, 220 mutation studies in 71 genes and 26 gene expression studies. Besides this substantial growth of content, several new sections have been opened. A FAQ ("Frequently Asked Question") has been compiled covering most questions relating to maintenance of the database, data coverage and data display. As there are is a new research consortium of asthma genetics (COAG) a page with addresses of collaborators has been established. In the toolbox a free molecule viewer for proteins has been installed. Finally, a new business section collects press releases of genomics and pharmaceutical companies relating to asthma and allergy genes. Within less than 6 months 75 new messages could be collected. Present work includes the integration of large scale expression data sets with cross referencing to genes already examined for association. As some studies are presented at meetings only it is planned to build up a comprehensive congress abstract data base to avoid any publication bias. Future efforts will also include an connection to a centrally database by the HUGO-Mutation Database Initiative of a large, computationally advanced depository.
Haplotype Module
Category Mutation Databases
