WormQTLHD--a web database for linking human disease to natural variation data in C. elegans

Abstract

Interactions between proteins are highly conserved across species. As a result, the molecular basis of multiple diseases affecting humans can be studied in model organisms that offer many alternative experimental opportunities. One such organism-Caenorhabditis elegans-has been used to produce much molecular quantitative genetics and systems biology data over the past decade. We present WormQTL(HD) (Human Disease), a database that quantitatively and systematically links expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL) findings in C. elegans to gene-disease associations in man. WormQTL(HD), available online at http://www.wormqtl-hd.org, is a user-friendly set of tools to reveal functionally coherent, evolutionary conserved gene networks. These can be used to predict novel gene-to-gene associations and the functions of genes underlying the disease of interest. We created a new database that links C. elegans eQTL data sets to human diseases (34 337 gene-disease associations from OMIM, DGA, GWAS Central and NHGRI GWAS Catalogue) based on overlapping sets of orthologous genes associated to phenotypes in these two species. We utilized QTL results, high-throughput molecular phenotypes, classical phenotypes and genotype data covering different developmental stages and environments from WormQTL database. All software is available as open source, built on MOLGENIS and xQTL workbench.

Figure 1.

Human and worm data integration. WormQTL^HD was compiled using data derived from WormQTL, WormBase, OMIM, DGA, GWAS Catalogue and GWAS Central.

Figure 2.

Cross-experiment search. WormQTL^HD provides four tools to explore the database: mapping human diseases to worm QTLs (Disease2QTL); mapping a worm genomic region to human diseases (Region2disease); mapping worm QTLs to human diseases (QTL2disease); and linking worm phenotypes to human diseases (ComparePheno).