Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 7, 2025

A Web Tool for Generating High Quality Machine-readable Biological Pathways
Published on: February 8, 2017
Graph databases in systems biology: a systematic review
Ilya Mazein1, Adrien Rougny2, Alexander Mazein2
1Medical Informatics Laboratory, University Medicine Greifswald, Walther-Rathenau-Straße 48, Greifswald 17475, Germany.
Abstract:
Graph databases are becoming increasingly popular across scientific disciplines, being highly suitable for storing and connecting complex heterogeneous data. In systems biology, they are used as a backend solution for biological data repositories, ontologies, networks, pathways, and knowledge graph databases. In this review, we analyse all publications using or mentioning graph databases retrieved from PubMed and PubMed Central full-text search, focusing on the top 16 available graph databases, Publications are categorized according to their domain and application, focusing on pathway and network biology and relevant ontologies and tools. We detail different approaches and highlight the advantages of outstanding resources, such as UniProtKB, Disease Ontology, and Reactome, which provide graph-based solutions. We discuss ongoing efforts of the systems biology community to standardize and harmonize knowledge graph creation and the maintenance of integrated resources. Outlining prospects, including the use of graph databases as a way of communication between biological data repositories, we conclude that efficient design, querying, and maintenance of graph databases will be key for knowledge generation in systems biology and other research fields with heterogeneous data.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Protein Networks
Genomics
Phylogenetic Trees
Gene Families
Occasionally these regions can be adapted to take on new roles within the organism, becoming novel genes...
Phylogeny
Globular and Fibrous Proteins
Globular proteins are also known as spheroproteins and typically are approximately round in shape. They contain a mix of amino acid types and contain differing sequences in their primary structures. Globular proteins have many different functions, such as enzymes, cellular messengers, and molecular transporters. These roles often require the proteins to be...

