A large amount of genomic and proteomic data is available today and it becomes important to focus on a single class of molecules and combine large amounts of heterogeneous data. The Molecular Class-Specific Information System (MCSIS) is a relational database-centered system to aid researchers with the collection and dissemination of data. It is easy to merge different types of data with a relational database, e.g., mutation data can be put into a multiple sequence alignment. Likewise, in-house databases can be interconnected with a MCSIS database. Two databases are based on this technology: the GPCRDB (G protein-coupled receptors) and the NucleaRDB (nuclear hormone receptors)(1).

The MCSIS technology is centered on a relational database system :

The MCSIS is composed of 3 modules (figure 1):

• MCSIS acquisition diverse data (MADD)

• MCSIS data environment

• MCSIS interactive client environment (MICE)

The MCSIS acquisition diverse data extracts data from Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL (2) and updates the computationally derived data. This module relies on WHAT IF (3) for the sequence classification.

The MCSIS data environment includes all the projects developed from the MCSIS database for Nuclear Receptors.

The MCSIS interactive client environment produces the html pages that are presented to the user.

References:

1. Horn F., Vriend G., Cohen FE. Collecting and harvesting biological data: the GPCRDB and NucleaRDB information systems. Nucleic Acids Res. 29:346-349 (2001)
2. Appel R.D., Bairoch A., Hochstrasser D.F. A new generation of information retrieval tools for biologists: the example of the ExPASy WWW server. Trends Biochem. Sci. 19:258-260 (1994)
3. Vriend G. WHAT IF: a molecular modeling and drug design program. J. Mol. Graph. 29:52-56 (1990)

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