Database Documents RNA Sequence Sets Stemming From Genetic Perturbations

For a paper in Nucleic Acids Research, a team at the Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, the Chinese Academy of Science, and other centers in China present an online collection of RNA sequences on "perturbed" human cell lines containing gene knockouts or knockdowns. The comprehensive human perturbation database, known as GPSAdb, currently houses data spanning more than 3,000 perturbation-related RNA sequence sets representing almost 1,500 genes that were knocked out or dialed down with approaches such as CRISPR-based gene editing or small interfering RNA, the researchers say, noting that the database "provides full exploration of these datasets and generated 6,096 new perturbed gene sets." Meanwhile, they add, the related online tool GPSA is designed to analyze molecular features behind differential gene expression profiles of interest. "As perturbed datasets are growing rapidly, we will annually survey newly released perturbed data resources, update GPSAdb accordingly, and maintain it as a useful resource for the research community, bridging the gap between biology and bioinformatics," the authors write.