Kalpana Panneerselvam - Human-pathogen interaction networks: IMEX's approach
Channel: Biocuration Conference 2023
Date: 2023-06-21

*Title:* Human-pathogen interaction networks: IMEx’s approach on the contextual metadata of the experimental evidence

*Session:* April 24 - Standards 1 - 01

*Abstract:* Host-pathogen interaction maps offer the scaffold to understand the biological processes behind the pathogenicity of the microbe and also helps in identifying potential drug targets. Access to the experimental evidence and contextual metadata which influence the interaction outcome are critical for accurate interpretation of molecular mechanisms. The IMEx consortium (www.imexconsortium.org) is an international database collaboration that exists to record molecular interaction data from scientific literature and direct depositions and make it freely accessible to the public, using an Open Access, Open-Source model. IMEx curators use a detailed representation of experimental evidence in the scientific literature: details of the affinity tags used, the mutations influencing the interaction outcome, variable experimental conditions, chemical and biological inhibitors, agonists and antagonists and required post-translational modifications, all using standard ontologies and controlled vocabularies to add more value towards the interpretation of scientific experiments and the biology behind. In the context of host-pathogen interactions, more than 33K binary interactions of Human proteins with bacterial and viral proteins are captured in IMEx. Interactions with SARS-CoV-2 and SARS Coronavirus with human count more than 7500 binaries; and ~6300 binary interactions have been curated in IMEx for Influenza-human PPIs. More than 4200 protein interactions of humans proteins with plague-causing Yersinia pestis bacterium are available at IMEx and 3000 interactions between humans and the anthrax bacterium Bacillus anthracis have been curated. 8300 human-viral protein interactions with members of Herpesvirus, Hepatitis and Papillomavirus family are also documented. Experimentally proven binding regions are available for more than 5000 interactions. More than 1000 interactions are shown to be affected by mutated protein sequence, compared to the wild-type protein. The IMEx’s MI scoring system for the molecular interactions based on the available experimental data are available to access the confidence behind every interacting pair. The IMEx consortium has been generating contextual molecular networks to reflect the type of relationship between the partners and over-laying metadata for the users to analyse those factors influencing the interaction outcome. This openly available resource is an invaluable tool with immediate applications in the study of variation impact on the interactome, sub-networks generated by mutated partners, small molecules affecting the networks, interaction interfaces as drug targets, among other key questions.