Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 1, 2026
07:40
A Data Integration Workflow to Identify Drug Combinations Targeting Synthetic Lethal Interactions
Published on: May 27, 2021
Comparative Toxicogenomics Database: a knowledgebase and discovery tool for chemical-gene-disease networks
Allan Peter Davis1, Cynthia G Murphy, Cynthia A Saraceni-Richards
1Department of Bioinformatics, The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, Salisbury Cove, ME 04672, USA.
Nucleic Acids Research
|September 11, 2008
Summary
The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) manually curates environmental chemical, gene, and disease data. This knowledgebase generates testable hypotheses to understand chemical impacts on human health.
Area of Science:
- Toxicology
- Genomics
- Environmental Health
Background:
- Environmental chemicals pose risks to human health.
- Understanding chemical-gene-disease interactions is crucial for risk assessment.
- Existing databases may lack comprehensive, manually curated data.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) as a resource for understanding chemical impacts on human health.
- To highlight CTD's unique features, including manual curation and data integration.
- To showcase the database's utility as both a knowledgebase and a discovery tool.
Main Methods:
- Manual curation of chemical-gene, chemical-disease, and gene-disease relationships from scientific literature.
- Integration of curated data with external resources like Gene Ontology and KEGG pathways.
- Construction of chemical-gene-disease networks.
Main Results:
- CTD contains over 116,000 curated interactions between 3,900 chemicals and 13,300 genes across 270 species.
- Direct relationships include 5,900 gene-disease and 2,500 chemical-disease links.
- Inferred relationships extend to 350,000 gene-disease and 77,000 chemical-disease links.
Conclusions:
- CTD provides a comprehensive, manually curated resource for exploring chemical-gene-disease relationships.
- The database facilitates the generation of testable hypotheses regarding environmental chemical exposure and human health.
- CTD serves as a valuable tool for researchers in toxicology, genomics, and environmental health.
Related Concept Videos
01:29Pharmacogenomics: Identification of New Drug Targets
Advances in genomics have profoundly influenced drug discovery by increasing both the speed and accuracy of pharmaceutical development. Pharmacogenomics, which examines how genetic variation influences drug response, facilitates the identification of novel therapeutic targets and enables patient stratification for personalized treatment. These strategies contribute to improved drug efficacy, minimized adverse effects, and more efficient clinical trial design.Mapping genetic differences...
01:21Toxicokinetics: Overview
Studies that assess how a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted (ADME) at toxic doses are termed toxicokinetics. Understanding toxicokinetics helps predict adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and manage toxicity in humans.Toxicokinetics differs from pharmacokinetics mainly in the dose levels studied, with toxicokinetics focusing on higher toxic doses. The kinetics at these levels can be non-linear due to altered physiological processes. Toxicodynamics examines the relationship...
01:29Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics: Overview
Pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics examine how genetic factors influence an individual's response to drugs. While pharmacogenetics focuses on the impact of specific genetic variants on drug effects, pharmacogenomics takes a broader approach, studying how genetic variation across populations contributes to differences in drug responses. These fields aim to explain why individuals may experience varying levels of efficacy or adverse reactions to the same medication.Variability in drug...
02:02Genomics
Genomics is the science of genomes: it is the study of all the genetic material of an organism. In humans, the genome consists of information carried in 23 pairs of chromosomes in the nucleus, as well as mitochondrial DNA. In genomics, both coding and non-coding DNA is sequenced and analyzed. Genomics allows a better understanding of all living things, their evolution, and their diversity. It has a myriad of uses: for example, to build phylogenetic trees, to improve productivity and...
02:46Genetic Screens
Genetic screens are tools used to identify genes and mutations responsible for phenotypes of interest. Genetic screens help identify individuals or a group of people at risk of developing genetic diseases and help them with early intervention, targeted therapy, and reproductive options.
Forward genetic screens
Forward or “classical” genetic screens involve creating random mutations in an organism’s DNA using radiation, mutagens, or insertion of additional bases, which result in visible changes...
Forward genetic screens
Forward or “classical” genetic screens involve creating random mutations in an organism’s DNA using radiation, mutagens, or insertion of additional bases, which result in visible changes...