MAPMAKING: A tool for visualizing data on metabolic pathways reveals new relationships among cancer-causing mutations.© ISTOCK.COM/SHULZ
The paper
E. Brunk et al., “Recon3D enables a three-dimensional view of gene variation in human metabolism,” Nat Biotechnol, 36:272-81, 2018.
DISPARATE DATA
To make better sense of the accumulated knowledge about human metabolic pathways gathered by different research groups, researchers led by Elizabeth Brunk, a structural systems biologist at the University of California, San Diego, constructed a database that displays aggregated protein structure, pharmacogenomic associations, and phenotypic data in 3D.
FILLING THE GAPSRecon3D’s inclusion of protein structural information from thousands of labs in a massive searchable map is the model’s “biggest step forward from other metabolic reconstructions,” says Brunk. Often, the data may be incomplete or may contain experimental artifacts; the team filled in those gaps using homology modeling, a technique in which researchers construct a ...
