Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD): update 2023

Area of Science:

• Toxicology
• Environmental Health
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) integrates diverse data on chemical exposures and biological effects from scientific literature.
• CTD serves as both a knowledgebase and a discoverybase, aiding research in environmental health.
• Existing CTD content includes chemicals, genes, phenotypes, diseases, taxa, and exposure information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To report updates and enhancements to the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD).
• To introduce novel tools for pathway construction and data integration within CTD.
• To improve the usability and accessibility of environmental health data.

Main Methods:

• Manual curation of chemical, gene, phenotype, disease, taxa, and exposure data from published literature.
• Integration of curated data to generate inferences and identify potential molecular mediators.
• Development of CTD Tetramers for computational generation of chemical-gene-phenotype-disease pathways.
• Integration of human biological media terms with CTD Anatomy pages for exposure analysis.

Main Results:

• A 20% increase in CTD content, including 17,100 chemicals, 54,300 genes, 6,100 phenotypes, 7,270 diseases, and 202,000 exposure statements.
• Introduction of CTD Tetramers, a tool for constructing potential molecular mechanistic pathways.
• Integration of biological media terms with anatomical locations, enabling tissue-specific chemical profile analysis.
• Enhancements to webpage visuals for improved user experience.

Conclusions:

• CTD continues to be a valuable resource for environmental health research, offering expanded data and innovative tools.
• The database facilitates hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery by linking chemical exposures to biological outcomes.
• Ongoing development aims to maintain CTD as a practical, user-friendly, and innovative platform for scientists.