The TRANSPATH signal transduction database: a knowledge base on signal transduction networks

TRANSPATH is an information system on gene-regulatory pathways, and an exte nsion module to the TRANSFAC database system (Wingender et al., Nucleic Aci ds Res., 28, 316-319, 2000). It focuses on pathways involved in the regulat ion of transcription factors in different species, mainly human, mouse and rat. Elements of the relevant signal transduction pathways like complexes, signaling molecules, and their states are stored together with information about their interaction in an object-oriented database. The database interf ace provides clickable maps and automatically generated pathway cascades as additional ways to explore the data. All information is validated with ref erences to the original publications. Also, references to other databases a re provided (TRANSFAC, SWISS-PROT, EMBL, PubMed and others).