The database of quantitative cellular signaling: management and analysis of chemical kinetic models of signaling networks

Motivation: Analysis of cellular signaling interactions is expected to pose an enormous informatics challenge, per-haps even larger than analyzing the genome. The complex networks arising from signaling processes are traditionally represented as block diagrams. A key step in the evolu-tion toward a more quantitative understanding of signal-ing is to explicitly specify the kinetics of all chemical reac-tion steps in a pathway. Technical advances in proteomics and high-throughput protein interaction assays promise a flood of such quantitative data. While annotations, molec-ular information and pathway connectivity have been com-piled in several databases, and there are several proposals for general cell model description languages, there is cur-rently little experience with databases of chemical kinetics and reaction level models of signaling networks. Results: The Database of Quantitative Cellular Signaling is a repository of models of signaling pathways. It is intended both to serve the growing field of chemical-reaction level simulation of signaling networks, and to anticipate issues in large-scale data management for signaling chemistry. Availability: The Database of Quantitative Cellular Sig-naling is available a