Bridging Glycoinformatics and Cheminformatics:Integration efforts between GlyCosmos and PubChem

On May 2, 2023, Prof. Kiyoko Kinoshita of Soka University and her colaborators published a paper in an American scientific journal "Glycobiology", reporting on integration of glycan-related information in GlyCosmos Scientific Portal with compound-related information in PubChem.

GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal is a portal site for glycoscience. In addition to glycan-related repositories, it provides information on glycogenes (genes that synthesize and/or degrade glycans), glycoproteins, glycolipids, glycan- and glycogene-related diseases, pathways, lectins, etc.

PubChem on the other hand, is the leading portal site for chemical compounds of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the United States. In addition to compound information, it provides information on genes, proteins, pathways, patents, and bioassays related to compounds.

In this paper, they reported that GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal and PubChem have cross-linked various data each other, and the data can be traced from their respective websites. As a result, glyccoscience researchers using GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal will be able to refer to a variety of glycan-related omics information in PubChem, and the millions of diverse monthly users of PubChem will be able to easily access glycoscience data in GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal. As an example, the paper discusses how glycosylation pathways and glycome information in GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal can now be easily linked to detailed information on the chemical structures of glycans and their glycan conjugates in PubChem for analysis. The paper also states that the linkage will be further strengthened, and that it is expected that the research on diseases and drug discovery using glycoinformatics and chemoinformatics in an integrated manner will be increasingly promoted by them.

GlyCosmos Glycoscience Portal is being developed as part of the "Database Integration Coordination Program (DICP)" research and development project "Data expansion and quality improvement of the Glycoscience Portal aiming towards interdisciplinary fusion " (PI: Kiyoko Kinoshita).

For details, please see original paper.