Elektronischer Stoffwechsel-Atlas (ELSA) ELSA was a BMBF (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) funded collaboration between research groups and companies comprising experts in genetics, biochemistry, bioinformatics and computer science. (Start: June, 1999; End: Dec. 2002) The main goal of ELSA was the development of methods for the analysis and visualisation of biochemical pathways. These methods should act as the basis for an integrated and dynamic system (or systems) for the analysis and visualisation of biochemical pathways, including different types of biological data. This is done along the lines of the analysis of one particular organism, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which has been experimentally analyzed in great detail by one of the project partners (Prof. Richard Hermmann's Group, ZMBH--Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie Heidelberg)
General System Sub-goals
Development and application of experimental methods for the analysis of the genome and the functions of genes and proteins of the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae. (Prof. Richard Hermmann's Group, ZMBH--Zentrum für Molekulare Biologie Heidelberg).
Development and implementation of new methods for the prediction of the functions of genes and proteins by sequence comparison (Dr. Peer Bork's Group, EMBL--European Molecular Biology Laboratory)
Structural modelling (3D) of proteins and protein complexes (Molecular and Cellular Modeling Group, EML)
Development of an integrated database system that will act as the basis for the modelling, analysis and visualisation of metabolic pathways and its associated data.
Development of multiple user interface concepts for the extraction, analysis and visualisation of the data stored in the database (Scientific Databases and Visualisation Group and Bioinformatics and Computational Biochemistry Group, EML)
Database Population (Scientific Databases and Visualisation Group, EML)
Development and implementation of methods for the automatic population of the database system from different data sources available on the internet, such as, literature, databases and abstracts.
Manual data extraction of information available on printed literature
Curation of extracted (both manually and automatic) data
Integration of experimental and predicted data related to Mycoplasma pneumoniae. This includes results from methods like 2D Electrophoresis and Micro-array data, as well as structural data of proteins, protein complexes and genes.
Development of methods for automatic and dynamic updates of the data and for the analysis of genomic and proteomic data (LION Bioscience)
