graphite (version 1.12.0)

spike: SPIKE pathways

Description

A list with a pathway object for each SPIKE pathway.

Arnon Paz, Zippora Brownstein, Yaara Ber, Shani Bialik, Eyal David, Dorit Sagir, Igor Ulitsky, Ran Elkon, Adi Kimchi, Karen B. Avraham, Yosef Shiloh and Ron Shamir SPIKE: a database of highly curated human signaling pathways. Nucleic Acids Research, 2011, Vol. 39, Database issue

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~spike/

Pathway topology conversion

SPIKE pathways were retrieved in the BioPax format from the SPIKE database web site. We define a pathway for each BioPax tag ``pathway''. Pathway nodes often correspond to multiple gene products. These can be divided into protein complexes (proteins linked by protein-protein interactions) and groups made of alternative members (genes with similar biochemical functions). Thus, when considering signal propagation these groups are considered differently. The first kind (hereafter group AND) should be expanded into a clique (all proteins connected to the others), while the second (hereafter group OR) should be expanded without connection among them. In the BioPax format only one type of group is allowed: protein complexes (group AND) with the tag 'complex'. However, it often happens that the 'protein' tag contains multiple 'xref' pointing to alternative elements of the process (group OR). Compound mediated interactions are interactions for which a compound acts as a bridge between two elements. Since chemical compounds are not usually measured with high-throughput technology, they should be removed from the network to analyse gene signals. However, the trivial elimination of the compounds, without signal propagation, will strongly bias the topology interrupting the signals that pass through them. If element 'A' is linked to compound 'c' and compound 'c' is linked to element 'B', element 'A' should be linked to element 'B'. Not all compounds are considered for the propagation because some of them (for example: H2O, ATP, ADP) are highly frequent in map descriptions and the signal propagation through them would lead to chains too long. Compounds not considered for propagation are not characteristic of a specific reaction, but act as secondary substrates/products widely shared among different processes. graphite allows the user to see the single/multiple relation types that characterized an edge. The type of edges have been kept as much as possible similar to those annotated in the original data format. Some new types have been introduced due to topological conversion needs.

See Also

pathway-class.