Gladstone scientists create Wikipathways to foster research col...( - The rapid accumulation of biologic...)

- The rapid accumulation of biological data today is a significant challenge for researchers. That challenge is prompting some scientists to focus on new ways to better manage that data and to make it readily available. The laboratory of Bruce Conklin in the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease has created a new collaboration tool, WikiPathways to focus on the use of biological pathways.

"Biological pathways connect genes and proteins in systems that contribute to normal physiology and disease," said Dr. Conklin. "They also organize our thinking about these processes."

Each pathway has to be built from information in multiple publications and databases. New pathway details are being uncovered every day, but the information needs to be organized in a workable system. The pathways also need to be amenable to computation, integration or data exchange. Pathway experts work all around the world, and most have little time to learn about complex databases that need their expertise.

To address these many challenges, the Conklin team chose to develop a new community-based model for pathway curation. In the collaborative spirit, this project was jointly conceived and executed in a partnership with Chris Evelo's lab in Maastricht Netherlands. The project is described in the current issue of PLoS Biology.

WikiPathways (http://www.wikipathways.org) is an open, collaborative platform for curating biological pathways. Building on the MediaWiki core that powers Wikipedia, they added a custom graphical pathway-editing tool and connections to major gene, protein and small molecule databases. This familiar web-based format makes it easy to participate. More importantly, it facilitates broad participation by the scientific community in peer review, editorial curation and maintenance of the pathway content.

"The wiki model as exemplified by Wikipedia, was an obvious place to
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