IMGC Web Portal: Content & Applications

The IMGC Web Portal is designed to facilitate the availability, accessibility and curation of data and information important to milk and lactation science. The goal of the portal is also to enable collaboration between consortium members within the portal environment around the very large databases of modern life sciences. Bioinformatic tools specific to the milk genomics consortium are necessary because, while genomic databases are rich in information, these data are very dilute particularly with respect to lactation. In this presentation, new scientific content will be unveiled: lactation-specific genes and annotations, lactation-related microarray data, and milk proteomic data.  Methods for future content contribution and collaboration by consortium members will be suggested.

To illustrate how large data sets may be leveraged to derive new knowledge in lactation, a specific example will be explored. Mammary gland microarray data, cellular localization data, gene ontology annotations, protein-protein interactions, and literature-mined genes were integrated and analyzed using statistics, principal component analysis, gene ontology analysis, and network analysis to identify global biological principles that govern molecular events during pregnancy, lactation, and involution.  The resulting key principles challenge our assumptions about the molecular regulation of lactation. Additionally, a comprehensive network of protein interactions during lactation is assembled and new regulatory gene targets are identified. Less than one fifth of the transcriptionally regulated nodes in this lactation network have been previously explored in the context of lactation.  Conference attendees will learn how to access, explore and interpret the rich data sets produced by this study.