Ovid adds BioCyc Pathway/Genome databases to support genomic researchers

Wolters Kluwer aids omics efforts with one-stop access to comprehensive data for sequenced organisms

To increase researchers’ access to comprehensive data, Wolters Kluwer, Health has expanded Ovid® with SRI International’s BioCyc™, a collection of more than 20,000 organism-centric Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs) and bioinformatics software tools. As the world’s most trusted medical research platform, Ovid offers premium aggregated content and productivity tools, including resources from over 120 publishers in more than 100 specialty areas.

SRI International is an independent, nonprofit research organization that has been supporting the discovery and design of ground-breaking products and technologies for over 75 years. Produced by SRI’s Bioinformatics Research Group, BioCyc provides an encyclopedic reference on the genomes, metabolic pathways, and regulatory networks of thousands of sequenced organisms from all domains of life, as well as data access, searching, analysis, and visualization tools. Sources of the data include computational inferences, data from other databases, and literature-based curation derived from over 130,000 peer-reviewed publications. BioCyc can be used in a broad range of applications, from nucleic acid biophysics and metabolic modeling of human microbiome organisms to drug and vaccine design and metabolic engineering.

Tapping the latest genomic advancements

Advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatics have resulted in a deluge of genetic sequence data that is being used to greatly enhance the understanding of living systems. Additionally, falling costs and faster turnaround times are enabling academic, nonprofit, commercial, and government researchers to use genetic data in drug discovery, agriculture, biotechnology, and other fields.

By adding BioCyc access to Ovid, Wolters Kluwer is enabling researchers to take advantage of this genomic information and more easily fulfill the promise it holds for clinical and academic research. Users can:

• Find detailed information about the biology of the organisms in its databases essential for basic biomedical research
• Analyze transcriptomics and metabolomics data in a pathway context
• Determine how micro-organisms interact with their hosts to cause disease
• Discover how to engineer micro-organisms to produce chemicals of industrial importance
• Develop novel approaches to disease diagnostics, prevention, and safe and effective drug discovery

“Bringing together the data and knowledge from BioCyc with the broad reach of the Ovid platform helps save researchers time money, and effort through the use of a single portal solution. This ease of use allows them to quickly answer vital research questions using our vast database of genomic and metabolic information,” said Peter Karp, Technical Director of the Bioinformatics Research Group at SRI International.

Streamlining access for omics researchers

With access to BioCyc’s PGDBs and software-based tools on Ovid’s platform, researchers can easily take advantage of the latest developments in pathway and genomics data. BioCyc is a natural fit for omics researchers. The Ovid platform’s breadth is ideally suited for the fast-evolving, multi-disciplinary research that bring together genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and other fields.

“We are continuing to expand Ovid with the premium, aggregated content and productivity tools today’s cutting-edge researchers need. By adding BioCyc to the Ovid ecosystem, we are delivering a one-stop-shop for genomic and metabolic pathway information and software tools to analyze the data,” said Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Medicine Segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice business at Wolters Kluwer. “BioCyc’s curated data content adds a powerful new dimension of versatility and value for Ovid users and will help accelerate the pace of their research.”