The innate immune system is a highly conserved, first line of host defence against infections and other disease stimuli. It initiates inflammatory responses and is important in surveillance of developing cancers. As a result of recent discoveries and an increased understanding of the components of this response, we are now able to better determine its role in diseases, assess human susceptibilities to disease and target therapeutics to this system. A key component of the innate response is the production of hormone-like proteins called interferons (IFNs). These proteins induce several thousand genes which are responsible for constituting each of the many biological effects of interferons – they inhibit viral replication, prevent cell growth and activate cells of the immune response.

The Interferome is a database of IFN regulated genes published in 2009 (Interferome.org; Samarajiwa et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 37, 852). This represents the initial stages in capture and integration of IFN treated microarray datasets, incorporating over 40 published and internally generated microarray datasets. This approach enables identification of interferon regulated gene sets in many biologically diverse high throughput microarray experiments.

Development work in this period covered the following functionality:

o Integration of BASE (Bio Array Software Environment) and Interferome system

Implementation of Data Capture Component to import data from Agilent machines, ArrayExpress? and GEO to BASE Microarray database 

Transfer of data from BASE to Interferome 

o Development of a web interface to provide improved usability and enhanced functionality compared to the legacy system used by the researchers including

Provision of greater query capability on the underlying research data 

Import of research data consisting of Experiment Metadata, Annotation and Datasets 

o Generation of RIF-CS for a data collection record that can then be harvested by ARDC:

Data Collection metadata registration process to capture the relevant information such as data licensing; 

Integration to the Research Master web services (EIF038) to retrieve the party and activity information for association with the data collection. 

To date the Interferome platform has been used to realise this goal for the ARDC-EIF sub project:

Interferome 

This project is supported by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS). ANDS is supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Program and the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Super Science Initiative.