Publications

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115 Publications visible to you, out of a total of 115

Abstract (Expand)

In this white paper, we describe the founding of a new ELIXIR Community - the Systems Biology Community - and its proposed future contributions to both ELIXIR and the broader community of systems biologists in Europe and worldwide. The Community believes that the infrastructure aspects of systems biology - databases, (modelling) tools and standards development, as well as training and access to cloud infrastructure - are not only appropriate components of the ELIXIR infrastructure, but will prove key components of ELIXIR’s future support of advanced biological applications and personalised medicine. By way of a series of meetings, the Community identified seven key areas for its future activities, reflecting both future needs and previous and current activities within ELIXIR Platforms and Communities. These are: overcoming barriers to the wider uptake of systems biology; linking new and existing data to systems biology models; interoperability of systems biology resources; further development and embedding of systems medicine; provisioning of modelling as a service; building and coordinating capacity building and training resources; and supporting industrial embedding of systems biology. A set of objectives for the Community has been identified under four main headline areas: Standardisation and Interoperability, Technology, Capacity Building and Training, and Industrial Embedding. These are grouped into short-term (3-year), mid-term (6-year) and long-term (10-year) objectives.

Authors: Vitor Martins dos Santos, Mihail Anton, Barbara Szomolay, Marek Ostaszewski, Ilja Arts, Rui Benfeitas, Victoria Dominguez Del Angel, Polonca Ferk, Dirk Fey, Carole Goble, Martin Golebiewski, Kristina Gruden, Katharina F. Heil, Henning Hermjakob, Pascal Kahlem, Maria I. Klapa, Jasper Koehorst, Alexey Kolodkin, Martina Kutmon, Brane Leskošek, Sébastien Moretti, Wolfgang Müller, Marco Pagni, Tadeja Rezen, Miguel Rocha, Damjana Rozman, David Šafránek, Rahuman S. Malik Sheriff, Maria Suarez Diez, Kristel Van Steen, Hans V Westerhoff, Ulrike Wittig, Katherine Wolstencroft, Anze Zupanic, Chris T. Evelo, John M. Hancock

Date Published: 2022

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

EnzymeML is an XML-based data exchange format that supports the comprehensive documentation of enzymatic data by describing reaction conditions, time courses of substrate and product concentrations, the kinetic model, and the estimated kinetic constants. EnzymeML is based on the Systems Biology Markup Language, which was extended by implementing the STRENDA Guidelines. An EnzymeML document serves as a container to transfer data between experimental platforms, modeling tools, and databases. EnzymeML supports the scientific community by introducing a standardized data exchange format to make enzymatic data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable according to the FAIR data principles. An application programming interface in Python supports the integration of software tools for data acquisition, data analysis, and publication. The feasibility of a seamless data flow using EnzymeML is demonstrated by creating an EnzymeML document from a structured spreadsheet or from a STRENDA DB database entry, by kinetic modeling using the modeling platform COPASI, and by uploading to the enzymatic reaction kinetics database SABIO-RK.

Authors: J. Range, C. Halupczok, J. Lohmann, N. Swainston, C. Kettner, F. T. Bergmann, A. Weidemann, U. Wittig, S. Schnell, J. Pleiss

Date Published: 11th Dec 2021

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

Background: Quantitative data reports are widely produced to inform health policy decisions. Policymakers are expected to critically assess provided information in order to incorporate the best available evidence into the decision-making process. Many other factors are known to influence this process, but little is known about how quantitative data reports are actually read. We explored the reading behavior of (future) health policy decision-makers, using innovative methods. Methods: We conducted a computer-assisted laboratory study, involving starting and advanced students in medicine and health sciences, and professionals as participants. They read a quantitative data report to inform a decision on the use of resources for long-term care in dementia in a hypothetical decision scenario. Data were collected through eye-tracking, questionnaires, and a brief interview. Eye-tracking data were used to generate ‘heatmaps’ and five measures of reading behavior. The questionnaires provided participants’ perceptions of understandability and helpfulness as well as individual characteristics. Interviews documented reasons for attention to specific report sections. The quantitative analysis was largely descriptive, complemented by Pearson correlations. Interviews were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results: In total, 46 individuals participated [students (85%), professionals (15%)]. Eye-tracking observations showed that the participants spent equal time and attention for most parts of the presented report, but were less focused when reading the methods section. The qualitative content analysis identified 29 reasons for attention to a report section related to four topics. Eye-tracking measures were largely unrelated to participants’ perceptions of understandability and helpfulness of the report. Conclusions: Eye-tracking data added information on reading behaviors that were not captured by questionnaires or interviews with health decision-makers.

Authors: Pamela Wronski, Michel Wensing, Sucheta Ghosh, Lukas Gärttner, Wolfgang Müller, Jan Koetsenruijter

Date Published: 1st Dec 2021

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

Science continues to become more interdisciplinary and to involve increasingly complex data sets. Many projects in the biomedical and health-related sciences follow or aim to follow the principles ofrinciples of FAIR data sharing, which has been demonstrated to foster collaboration, to lead to better research outcomes, and to help ensure reproducibility of results. Data generated in the course of biomedical and health research present specific challenges for FAIR sharing in the sense that they are heterogeneous and highly sensitive to context and the needs of protection and privacy. Data sharing must respect these features without impeding timely dissemination of results, so that they can contribute to time-critical advances in medical therapy and treatment. Modeling and simulation of biomedical processes have become established tools, and a global community has been developing algorithms, methodologies, and standards for applying biomedical simulation models in clinical research. However, it can be difficult for clinician scientists to follow the specific rules and recommendations for FAIR data sharing within this domain. We seek to clarify the standard workflow for sharing experimental and clinical data with the simulation modeling community. By following these recommendations, data sharing will be improved, collaborations will become more effective, and the FAIR publication and subsequent reuse of data will become possible at the level of quality necessary to support biomedical and health-related sciences.

Authors: Matthias König, Jan Grzegorzewski, Martin Golebiewski, Henning Hermjakob, Mike Hucka, Brett Olivier, Sarah Keating, David Nickerson, Falk Schreiber, Rahuman Sheriff, Dagmar Waltemath

Date Published: 19th Nov 2021

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

The German Central Health Study Hub COVID-19 is an online service that offers bundled access to COVID-19 related studies conducted in Germany. It combines metadata and other information of epidemiologic, public health and clinical studies into a single data repository for FAIR data access. In addition to study characteristics the system also allows easy access to study documents, as well as instruments for data collection. Study metadata and survey instruments are decomposed into individual data items and semantically enriched to ease the findability. Data from existing clinical trial registries (DRKS, clinicaltrails.gov and WHO ICTRP) are merged with epidemiological and public health studies manually collected and entered. More than 850 studies are listed as of September 2021.

Authors: J. Darms, J. Henke, X. Hu, C. O. Schmidt, M. Golebiewski, J. Fluck

Date Published: 18th Nov 2021

Publication Type: Journal

Abstract (Expand)

Chemical named entity recognition (NER) is a significant step for many downstream applications like entity linking for the chemical text-mining pipeline. However, the identification of chemical entities in a biomedical text is a challenging task due to the diverse morphology of chemical entities and the different types of chemical nomenclature. In this work, we describe our approach that was submitted for BioCreative version 7 challenge Track 2, focusing on the ‘Chemical Identification’ task for identifying chemical entities and entity linking, using MeSH. For this purpose, we have applied a two-stage approach as follows (a) usage of fine-tuned BioBERT for identification of chemical entities (b) semantic approximate search in MeSH and PubChem databases for entity linking. There was some friction between the two approaches, as our rule-based approach did not harmonise optimally with partially recognized words forwarded by the BERT component. For our future work, we aim to resolve the issue of the artefacts arising from BERT tokenizers and develop joint learning of chemical named entity recognition and entity linking using pre-trained transformer-based models and compare their performance with our preliminary approach. Next, we will improve the efficiency of our approximate search in reference databases during entity linking. This task is non-trivial as it entails determining similarity scores of large sets of trees with respect to a query tree. Ideally, this will enable flexible parametrization and rule selection for the entity linking search.

Authors: Ghadeer Mobasher, Lukrécia Mertová, Sucheta Ghosh, Olga Krebs, Bettina Heinlein, Wolfgang Müller

Date Published: 11th Nov 2021

Publication Type: Proceedings

Abstract (Expand)

This special issue of the Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics contains updated specifications of COMBINE standards in systems and synthetic biology. The 2021 special issue presents four updates of standards: Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual Version 2.3, Synthetic Biology Open Language Visual Version 3.0, Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language Level 1 Version 4, and OMEX Metadata specification Version 1.2. This document can also be consulted to identify the latest specifications of all COMBINE standards.

Authors: F. Schreiber, P. Gleeson, M. Golebiewski, T. E. Gorochowski, M. Hucka, S. M. Keating, M. Konig, C. J. Myers, D. P. Nickerson, B. Sommer, D. Waltemath

Date Published: 22nd Oct 2021

Publication Type: Journal

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