Gene regulation knowledge commons: community action takes care of DNA binding transcription factors.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-5-2016

JAX Source

Database (Oxford) 2016 Jun 5; 2016:baw088

Volume

2016

ISSN

1758-0463

PMID

27270715

Abstract

A large gap remains between the amount of knowledge in scientific literature and the fraction that gets curated into standardized databases, despite many curation initiatives. Yet the availability of comprehensive knowledge in databases is crucial for exploiting existing background knowledge, both for designing follow-up experiments and for interpreting new experimental data. Structured resources also underpin the computational integration and modeling of regulatory pathways, which further aids our understanding of regulatory dynamics. We argue how cooperation between the scientific community and professional curators can increase the capacity of capturing precise knowledge from literature. We demonstrate this with a project in which we mobilize biological domain experts who curate large amounts of DNA binding transcription factors, and show that they, although new to the field of curation, can make valuable contributions by harvesting reported knowledge from scientific papers. Such community curation can enhance the scientific epistemic process.Database URL: http://www.tfcheckpoint.org. Database (Oxford) 2016 Jun 5; 2016:baw088

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