HighAltitudeOmicsDB

Millions of people worldwide visit, live or work in the hypoxic environment encountered at high altitudes and it is important to understand the biomolecular responses to this stress. This would help design mitigation strategies for high altitude illnesses. In spite of a number of studies spanning over 100 years, still the complex mechanisms controlling acclimatization to hypoxia remain largely unknown. To identify potential diagnostic, therapeutic and predictive markers for HA stress, it is important to comprehensively compare and analyse these studies. Towards this goal, HighAltitudeOmicsDB is a unique resource that provides a comprehensive, curated, user-friendly and detailed compilation of various genes/proteins which have been experimentally validated to be associated with various HA conditions, their protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and gene ontology (GO) semantic similarities. For each database entry, HighAltitudeOmicsDB additionally stores the level of regulation (up/down-regulation), fold change, study control group, duration and altitude of exposure, tissue of expression, source organism, level of hypoxia, method of experimental validation, place/country of study, ethnicity, geographical location etc. The database also collates information on disease and drug association, tissue-specific expression level, GO and KEGG pathway associations. The web resource is a unique server platform that offers interactive PPI networks and GO semantic similarity matrices among the interactors.These unique features help to offer mechanistic insights into the disease pathology.

全球范围内有数百万人会前往高海拔地区旅行、居住或工作，在此环境中会遭遇低氧应激，因此解析机体对该应激的生物分子响应机制具有重要价值。该研究将助力开发高原疾病的干预策略。
尽管已有逾百年的相关研究，但调控低氧适应的复杂分子机制仍未被完全阐明。为识别高海拔（High Altitude, HA）应激潜在的诊断、治疗及预测标志物，全面整合并分析此类研究至关重要。
基于此目标开发的HighAltitudeOmicsDB是一款独特的数据库资源，它全面收录、经人工审编、易用性强且内容详实，涵盖了经实验验证与各类高海拔病症相关的基因/蛋白质、这些分子的蛋白质相互作用（Protein-Protein Interaction, PPI）以及基因本体（Gene Ontology, GO）语义相似性数据。针对每一条数据库条目，HighAltitudeOmicsDB还会存储以下信息：调控方向（上调/下调）、倍数变化（fold change）、研究对照分组、暴露时长与海拔高度、表达组织、来源物种、低氧程度、实验验证方法、研究开展地点/国家、种族、地理位置等。
该数据库还整合了疾病与药物关联、组织特异性表达水平、GO以及京都基因与基因组百科全书（Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, KEGG）通路关联相关的信息。这款网络数据库同时是一款独特的服务平台，可提供交互性的PPI网络以及互作分子间的GO语义相似性矩阵。这些独特的功能可为解析疾病病理的分子机制提供关键洞察。