CentrosomeDB: a new generation of the centrosomal proteins database for Human and Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

We present the second generation of centrosomeDB, available online at http://centrosome.cnb.csic.es, with a significant expansion of 1357 human and drosophila centrosomal genes and their corresponding information. The centrosome of animal cells takes part in important biological processes such as the organization of the interphase microtubule cytoskeleton and the assembly of the mitotic spindle. The active research done during the past decades has produced lots of data related to centrosomal proteins. Unfortunately, the accumulated data are dispersed among diverse and heterogeneous sources of information. We believe that the availability of a repository collecting curated evidences of centrosomal proteins would constitute a key resource for the scientific community. This was our first motivation to introduce CentrosomeDB in NAR database issue in 2009, collecting a set of human centrosomal proteins that were reported in the literature and other sources. The intensive use of this resource during these years has encouraged us to present this new expanded version. Using our database, the researcher is offered the possibility to study the evolution, function and structure of the centrosome. We have compiled information from many sources, including Gene Ontology, disease-association, single nucleotide polymorphisms and associated gene expression experiments. Special interest has been paid to protein-protein interaction.

Figure 1.

Snapshots of CentrosomeDB results in a typical use case. The Interactome of the centrosomal genes used by Fogeron et al. is shown at the top. The CDKN1A protein is selected from the network to visualize its functional information, its interaction with cyclin-dependent kinase proteins, its structural organization as well as its interactions with other centrosomal proteins in the database.