You are here:
EFFORTS TO EXPAND THE DSSTOX STRUCTURE-SEARCHABLE PUBLIC TOXICITY DATABASE NETWORK
Citation:
Rogers, B. A. AND A M. Richard. EFFORTS TO EXPAND THE DSSTOX STRUCTURE-SEARCHABLE PUBLIC TOXICITY DATABASE NETWORK. Presented at Genetics and Environmental Mutagenesis Society Fall Meeting, Chapel Hill, NC, November 10, 2004.
Description:
A major goal of the DSSTox website is to improve the utility of published toxicity data across different fields of research. The largest barriers in the exploration of toxicity data by chemists and modelers are the lack of chemical structure annotation in the research literature and public databases coupled with the lack of full access to this toxicity data. Each DSSTox database is written with the collaboration of toxicity experts and incorporates standardized chemical structure annotation and data fields that enhance relational searching across multiple databases and can aid development of structure-activity relationship models. The DSSTox website (http://www.epa.gov/nheerl/dsstox) offers full access to toxicity database files and provides resources to encourage the scientific community to participate in the project. Efforts to expand the DSSTox project are centered on increasing the number of published toxicity databases and coordinating with other public database efforts to enhance the utility of these files. Undergraduate student EPA grantees play a prominent role in the DSSTox project, particularly in database development, annotation, and quality review. Most recently, the focus is on automating the most tedious and error prone aspects of these tasks, with scripts written in the open source programming language, Python, to be made publicly available on the DSSTox website. This project has provided an opportunity for undergraduate students to be introduced to many aspects of database development, chemical relational database programs, programming, and chemistry and toxicology aspects of public toxicity databases, while contributing to development of an important public resource.