InSilico Proteomics System: Integration and Application of Protein and Protein-Protein Interaction Data using Microsoft .NET

In the last decades, biological databases became the major knowledge resource for researchers in the field of molecular biology. The distribution of information among these databases is one of the major problems. An overview about the subject area of data access and representation of protein and protein-protein interaction data within public biological databases is described. For a comprehensive and consistent way of searching and analysing integrated protein and protein-protein interaction data, the InSilico Proteomics (ISP) project has been initiated. Its three main objectives are (1) to provide an integrated knowledge pool for data investigation and global network analysis functions for a better understanding of a cell’s interactome, (2) employment of public data for plausibility analysis and validation of in-house experimental data and (3) testing the applicability of Microsoft’s .NET architecture for bioinformatics applications. Data integrated into the ISP database can be queried through the Web portal PRIMOS (PRotein Interaction and MOlecule Search) which is freely available at http://biomis.fh-hagenberg.at/isp/primos.