WormQTLHD—a web database for linking human disease to natural variation data inC. elegans

K. Joeri van der Velde, Mark de Haan, Konrad Zych, Danny Arends, L. Basten Snoek, Jan E. Kammenga, Ritsert C. Jansen, Morris A. Swertz, Yang Li
2013 Nucleic Acids Research  
Interactions between proteins are highly conserved across species. As a result, the molecular basis of multiple diseases affecting humans can be studied in model organisms that offer many alternative experimental opportunities. One such organism-Caenorhabditis elegans-has been used to produce much molecular quantitative genetics and systems biology data over the past decade. We present WormQTL HD (Human Disease), a database that quantitatively and systematically links expression Quantitative
more » ... it Loci (eQTL) findings in C. elegans to gene-disease associations in man. WormQTL HD , available online at http://www.wormqtl-hd.org, is a user-friendly set of tools to reveal functionally coherent, evolutionary conserved gene networks. These can be used to predict novel gene-to-gene associations and the functions of genes underlying the disease of interest. We created a new database that links C. elegans eQTL data sets to human diseases (34 337 gene-disease associations from OMIM, DGA, GWAS Central and NHGRI GWAS Catalogue) based on overlapping sets of orthologous genes associated to phenotypes in these two species. We utilized QTL results, high-throughput molecular phenotypes, classical phenotypes and genotype data covering different developmental stages and environments from WormQTL database. All software is available as open source, built on MOLGENIS and xQTL workbench.
doi:10.1093/nar/gkt1044 pmid:24217915 pmcid:PMC3965109 fatcat:2q6q2eo3ljgojg3n5nsubnwdae