BioThings SDK: a toolkit for building high-performance data APIs in biomedical research

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Computational Biology
• Data Science

Background:

• Biomedical resources require increased accessibility and reusability.
• Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are crucial for disseminating knowledge.
• Existing BioThings APIs (MyGene.info, MyVariant.info, MyChem.info) integrate gene, variant, and chemical annotations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the BioThings Software Development Kit (SDK).
• To provide a generalizable and reusable toolkit for creating high-performance APIs.
• To empower users to build custom BioThings APIs for any data type.

Main Methods:

• The BioThings SDK is a Python-based toolkit.
• It facilitates the integration of data from multiple disparate sources.
• It automates the creation and updating of APIs.

Main Results:

• The SDK allows for the creation of custom BioThings APIs.
• Users can easily integrate and manage annotations for various data types.
• APIs can be kept up-to-date with underlying data sources.

Conclusions:

• The BioThings SDK simplifies the development of specialized biomedical APIs.
• It enhances the accessibility and reusability of biological data.
• It supports researchers and developers in annotation retrieval and identifier mapping.