Project Summary/Abstract
We seek renewal of the core operating funding for The Reactome Knowledgebase. Reactome is a manually
curated, peer-reviewed open access biological pathway knowledgebase that can be publicly used and
redistributed by all biological research community members. The Reactome knowledgebase is used by
academic, nonprofit and for-profit entities worldwide. Specifically, Reactome is employed by genomics and
proteomics researchers, clinicians, geneticists, and molecular biologists to interpret the results of large-scale
omics screening projects, by data scientists and bioinformaticians to develop novel approaches for knowledge
discovery and mining, and by systems biologists to build predictive models of normal and disease pathways for
drug discovery. Our curators, PhD-level scientists, work closely with independent investigators within the
community to assemble human- and machine-readable descriptions of human biological pathways manually
using dedicated software tools. Each pathway is checked and peer-reviewed prior to publication to ensure its
factual accuracy and compliance with the data model. A system of evidence tracking ensures that all assertions
are supported by the primary literature. Reactome uses community-standard controlled vocabularies and
ontologies to increase interoperability across resources. Pathways are reviewed and updated regularly.
Reactome pathways are available on our web site for browsing, downloading, and manipulation by in-house
and third-party online analysis tools. The project is highly cited in the literature, has been used repeatedly to
make significant biological discoveries, and is incorporated into a large number of high-impact computational
tools and resources. Over the next five years, we will: (1) efficiently curate normal and disease processes, and
effects of genetic variation and drugs on protein function; (2) improve pathway data analysis and input tools to
increase the curation efficiency and the utility of Reactome data in large-scale biological data science projects;
(3) enhance the open Reactome platform; and (4) conduct active outreach efforts to facilitate user engagement,
community feedback, and adoption of Reactome.