Version 4.0 of PaxDb: Protein abundance data, integrated across model organisms, tissues, and cell-lines

Abstract

Protein quantification at proteome-wide scale is an important aim, enabling insights into fundamental cellular biology and serving to constrain experiments and theoretical models. While proteome-wide quantification is not yet fully routine, many datasets approaching proteome-wide coverage are becoming available through biophysical and MS techniques. Data of this type can be accessed via a variety of sources, including publication supplements and online data repositories. However, access to the data is still fragmentary, and comparisons across experiments and organisms are not straightforward. Here, we describe recent updates to our database resource "PaxDb" (Protein Abundances Across Organisms). PaxDb focuses on protein abundance information at proteome-wide scope, irrespective of the underlying measurement technique. Quantification data is reprocessed, unified, and quality-scored, and then integrated to build a meta-resource. PaxDb also allows evolutionary comparisons through precomputed gene orthology relations. Recently, we have expanded the scope of the database to include cell-line samples, and more systematically scan the literature for suitable datasets. We report that a significant fraction of published experiments cannot readily be accessed and/or parsed for quantitative information, requiring additional steps and efforts. The current update brings PaxDb to 414 datasets in 53 organisms, with (semi-) quantitative abundance information covering more than 300,000 proteins.

Keywords: Absolute protein abundance; Bioinformatics; Evolution; Spectral counting.