HPIDB: A Curated Database for Host-Pathogen Interactions

Understanding the interplay between host and pathogen that underpins health/disease enables identification of potential targets for therapeutic, prophylactic and intervention strategies to eliminate or reduce the severity and economic impact of infectious diseases. However, existing host-pathogen interaction (HPI) data is generally poorly represented in molecular interaction databases or is predicted based on sequence analyses. Species-specific HPI data for agricultural animals including chicken is very limited. To provide agricultural researchers with HPI information, we developed Host-Pathogen Interaction Database (HPIDB). HPIDB (http://www.agbase.msstate.edu/hpi/main.html) contains 43,276 manually curated entries in the current release. Since the first description of the database in 2010, we made multiple enhancements to HPIDB data and interface services. Notably, HPIDB now provides targeted biocuration of molecular interaction data. As a member of the International Molecular Exchange consortium, annotations provided by HPIDB curators meet community standards to provide detailed contextual experimental information and facilitate data sharing. Moreover, HPIDB provides access to rapid community annotations that capture minimum information regarding molecular interactions to address immediate researcher needs for HPI network analysis. In addition to curation, HPIDB integrate HPI from existing external sources and contain tools to infer additional HPI where annotated data is scarce. Compared to other molecular interaction databases, our data collection approach ensures HPIDB users access the most comprehensive HPI data from a wide range of pathogens and their hosts (currently, 567 pathogen and 68 host species). Improvements to user interface include enhanced search capacity, addition of Gene Ontology functional information, and implementation of network visualization.