IDR: the ImmunoDeficiency Resource

The ImmunoDeficiency Resource (IDR), freely available at http://www.uta.fi/imt/bioinfo/idr/, is a comprehensive knowledge base on immunodeficiencies. It is designed for different user groups such as researchers, physicians and nurses as well as patients and their families and the general public. Information on immunodeficiencies is stored as fact files, which are disease- and gene-based information resources. We have developed an inherited disease markup language (IDML) data model, which is designed for storing disease- and gene-specific data in extensible markup language (XML) format. The fact files written by the IDML can be used to present data in different contexts and platforms. All the information in the IDR is validated by expert curators.