Omics-DI : Searching the Omics Space

In the age of systems biology and data integration, omics data (proteomics/genomics/metabolomics) represents an essential component required for us to understand the “whole picture” of life. Access to this data is now a crucial component in biological research and requires substantial investment and infrastructure for users to reap maximal benefit from it. Several public repositories have been developed, each with different purposes in mind, such as PRIDE, Massive, PeptideAtlas, Metabolights, Metabolomics Workbench and EGA. While there is often integration between repositories for the same data type, discovery of datasets across multiple omics datatypes remains a tedious task requiring different query strategies across each disparate resource. A common interface with integrated services such as PubMed to give rapid access to publications is a much-needed resource for the ‘omics’ community, to provide an access-point from where the user can search related datasets by using publication information or common metadata.

The aim of OmicsDI (www.omicsdi.org/) is to provide a data discovery index for proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics and genomics datasets by integrating multiple databases and repositories from the US, Europe and worldwide. It provides the required infrastructure to rapidly add new databases/repositories and enables the researcher to search, navigate, and find “high-quality”, and relevant datasets.