- Course overview
- Search within this course
- Why do we need a pathway database?
- What is Reactome?
- When to use Reactome
- Who is Reactome for?
- Navigating Reactome
- Understanding the Pathway Browser
- Analysing data
- Programmatic access
- Contributing to Reactome
- Summary
- Try it yourself!
- Your feedback
- Get help and support on Reactome
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Why do we need a pathway database?
Challenges
Pathway information is often presented in scientific literature as text and diagrams. There are several limitations for scientists to reliably access and analyse this information because of the variety, volume and veracity in the data. Some challenges are listed below:
- The information is spread across many several hundreds of papers
- Scientific exploration is often an ongoing work and information may be incomplete or outdated
- It is not easy to simultaneously investigate different types of biological information in pathways
- It is not accessible for computational reuse
How does Reactome address these issues?
To address the challenges in studying cellular pathways, Reactome provides a reliable and comprehensive pathway knowledgebase that has a user-friendly interface. Events or reactions are based on published information, extracted from papers by biologists who are experts in their field, assisted by scientific curators who add consistent structure to the information and represent it in the Reactome database. New pathways are reviewed by a second expert biologist before they are made visible on the website. This process verifies the details and provides a consistent structure to the data, making it accessible for computational data mining and re-use. Reactome is therefore, a curated, quality-assured slice of pathway information, available as diagrams and descriptions on the Reactome website and as downloadable pathways (Figure 1).
