Interleukins and their signaling pathways in the Reactome biological pathway database.

Area of Science:

• Biochemistry
• Molecular Biology
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Scientific literature contains vast, but fragmented, biological pathway information.
• Many published pathways are incomplete, lack detail, or are controversial, limiting their computational use.
• Existing pathway representations often assume expert knowledge and lack unambiguous descriptions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish Reactome as a freely accessible knowledge base of human biological pathways.
• To provide a manually curated, detailed, and computationally reusable resource for biological pathways.
• To facilitate the understanding and analysis of complex biological processes.

Main Methods:

• Manual curation of biological pathways by expert biologists and curators.
• Representation of pathways using a formal, open data structure with detailed molecular events and participants.
• Linking pathway information to published experimental data and background material.
• Peer-review process for all newly created pathway events.

Main Results:

• The 63rd release (December 2017) contains 10,996 human proteins in 11,426 events across 2,179 pathways.
• Provides interactive pathway diagrams, descriptive annotations, and downloadable datasets in multiple formats.
• Includes analytic tools for pathway enrichment, expression profile visualization, and integration of custom data.
• Content is accessible programmatically via REST services and as a Neo4J graph database.

Conclusions:

• Reactome offers a comprehensive, computationally accessible resource for human biological pathways.
• The inclusion of interleukin signaling pathways enhances the understanding of immune function.
• Future aims include expanding coverage of gene expression changes induced by interleukin signaling.