Molecular Interactions and Data Standardisation

Molecular interactions are crucial components of the cellular process. In order to understand this complex machinery, one needs to gather published data from various sources. Many projects have initiated the collection of interaction data for this purpose since 2002. However, the lack of standardisation previously made the task of aggregating datasets difficult. This issue has been resolved by the creation of Molecular Interaction standard in 2004 by members of the Proteomics Standards Initiative (PSI), a work group of the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO). Furthermore, major database providers have come together with the goal to exchange data in order to optimise laborious curation tasks. Finally, tools and frameworks have been created based on PSI-MI standards to facilitate the visualisation and analysis of molecular interaction data.