Ariadne Genomics, AAAS Agreement Creates Better Ways for Researchers to Manipulate Data for Potential Therapeutic Benefit
Ariadne Genomics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) today announced a licensing and distribution agreement that allows data from leading researchers on how cells talk to each other through chemical signals as they adapt to changes in their environment to be merged with analytical software that can reveal a greater understanding of why these changes occur and their potential importance to developing disease therapies.
Rockville, MD (PRWEB) June 30, 2005 -– Ariadne Genomics and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) today announced a licensing
and distribution agreement that allows data from leading researchers on how
cells talk to each other through chemical signals as they adapt to changes in
their environment to be merged with analytical software that can reveal a
greater understanding of why these changes occur and their potential importance
to developing disease therapies.
AAAS, publisher of the journal Science,
developed the Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment, an enhanced online
journal, known as Science's STKE, that also functions as an electronic resource
enabling scientists, researchers, students and educators to find, organize, and
use information relevant to cell regulation processes. Leading authorities enter
their knowledge about cell signaling into the Connections Maps database, which
includes information on signaling components and their relationships organized
into pathways. This information is freely accessible through a graphical
interface at the STKE Web site and includes selected citations and authorities'
evaluations of the strength of the evidence for associations within the
database.
The software suites developed by Ariadne Genomics -
PathwayAssist™ and PathwayStudio® Central - will allow additional types of
analysis of the Connections Maps pathway data and will provide tools for
biomedical and basic science researchers to interpret their data within a
biologically meaningful context. These include interpretation of microarray data
for changes in gene expression. Currently the STKE Connections Maps database
contains 62 pathways and thousands of components and relations that span all
types of organisms, from plants to yeast to humans.
“The STKE database
is a great addition to PathwayAssist's own databases for anyone who needs access
to complete signal transduction knowledge,” said Michael Seewald,
bioinformatician, Bayer Healthcare AG, Wuppertal, Germany. “PathwayAssist has
become one of the most essential research tools. Its manually curated
dictionaries and the MedScan algorithm allow the automatic generation of highly
accurate disease-focused networks from literature. The digital representation of
pathways as graphs is a great leap forward compared to the static and
cartoon-like textbook pathways of the past.”
The STKE database
complements pathway products by Ariadne Genomics: PathwayAssist™ desktop package
and PathwayStudio® Central client-server software for visualization and analysis
of biological pathways. Both products leverage Ariadne Genomic’s ResNet database
of more than 500,000 functional relationships, and its MedScan module for
automated extraction of functional relationships from scientific text. A shared
goal of Science's STKE and Ariadne Genomics is to increase the likelihood of
scientists making new connections between facts from discrete sources.
“I
have been a PathwayAssist user since its very first version," said Aura Perez,
M.D., Ph.D., Department of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio. "The ability to mine the myriad of functional relationships
extracted from publications, and match the result to the change observed in
one’s experimental system, is of tremendous benefit to me. The addition of STKE
signaling pathways curated by leading authorities in the field will reinforce
tremendously what we can do with PathwayAssist. I’m looking forward to seeing
more and more curated pathways incorporated within the software.”
Signal
transduction is the study of how cells respond and adapt to their environments
through chemical signals. It is an intensely active field of biomedical research
and is of interest to a broad array of scientists, including those who need to
follow and apply findings even though their primary interest may not be in
signal transduction mechanisms themselves. In 2004 alone, about 16,000
scientific articles were published in this field.
The STKE Connections
Maps pathway collection will be offered to customers for an additional fee. More
information about pathway products from Ariadne Genomics is available at www.ariadnegenomics.com/products. More information about the
STKE Connections Maps database can be found at stke.sciencemag.org.
About AAAS
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the
journal Science (www.sciencemag.org), Science's STKE (www.stke.org), and Science's SAGE
KE (http://sageke.sciencemag.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and
serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10
million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any
peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total
readership of 1 million. The nonprofit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and
fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives
in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the
latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the
premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
About Ariadne
Genomics
Ariadne Genomics is a Maryland-based company developing systems
biology tools for life science research: PathwayStudio® Central client-server
pathway analysis software, PathwayAssist™ desktop software for reconstruction,
analysis and visualization of biological pathways; MedScan™ TextMiner, an
automated scientific text processing tool; ResNet molecular networks database,
created by automated extraction of biological facts from the entire PubMed, and
Seqware™ personal sequence data management platform. More on Ariadne Genomics
please find at www.ariadnegenomics.com.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb256088.htm