Modeling data for Infectious agents

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C. elegans serves as an infection model for various bacteria, fungi and nematodes, in order to study:

  • host genes involved in infection and resistance
  • bacterial virulence factors
  • to identify effective drugs
  • drug screening in infection


Model Proposal for ?Gene

The Experimental_model tag refers to ?DO_term (disease), in cases of study of infectious agents using Elegans, it is not so much a 'disease model' as an infection model. It's a bit silly to talk about elegans as a model for dysentery, as compared to saying it is an infection model for the bacteria, Shigella flexneri, which is the pathogen in dysentery.

We will attach this information to Gene, analogous to disease information (similar to the Experimental_model and Potential model tags for Gene). Initially I thought of tagging Genes just as 'Infection_model' but I think it's worthwhile to actually delineate this a bit further and tag genes as either needed for pathogen infection or resistance to it, thus the 'Required_for_infection' and 'Resistance_to_infection' tags.


 
 Current Gene model:
 ?Gene
 Disease_info 	Experimental_model  ?DO_term  XREF  Gene_by_biology        ?Species    #Evidence	            
              	Potential_model	    ?DO_term  XREF  Gene_by_orthology      ?Species    #Evidence
              	Disease_relevance   ?Text                                  ?Species    #Evidence 
 
 Add under ?Gene:

 Infection_model     Required_for_infection       ?Strain   XREF  Infection_gene_in_host    ?Species    #Evidence  
                     Resistance_to_infection      ?Strain   XREF  Resistance_gene_in_host   ?Species    #Evidence
                     Infection_model_description  ?Text                                     ?Species    #Evidence

 

Curating information about the infectious agent-Proposal for ?Strain:

As was suggested for capturing information about the bacterial species for GO data, we will use the ?Strain model to hold pathogen inforamtion.


Add to Strain model:


 ?Strain
 Infection_model_info             Infection_gene_in_host   ?Gene  XREF  Required_for_infection
                                  Resistance_gene_in_host  ?Gene  XREF  Resistance_to_infection
                                  Infection_model_description  ?Text  ?Species  #Evidence