u-CARE: user-friendly Comprehensive Antibiotic resistance Repository ofEscherichia coli

• DOI: 10.1136/jclinpath-2015-202927
• Publication Date: 2015-05-03T01:12:07Z
• Authors: Saurav B Saha; Vishwas Uttam; Vivek Verma
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; Genotype; Escherichia coli Proteins; Information Storage and Retrieval; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Anti-Bacterial Agents; 3. Good health; Access to Information; User-Computer Interface; 03 medical and health sciences; Databases, Genetic; Drug Resistance, Bacterial; Mutation; Computer Graphics; Escherichia coli; Humans; Escherichia coli Infections

Background and aimsDespite medical advancements,Escherichia coli-associated infections remain a major public health concern and although an abundant information aboutE. coliand its antibiotic resistance mechanisms is available, no effective tool exists that integrates gene and genomic data in context to drug resistance, thus raising a need to develop a repository that facilitates integration and assimilation of factors governing drug resistance inE. coli.DescriptionsUser-friendly Comprehensive Antibiotic resistance Repository ofEscherichia coli(u-CARE) is a manually curated catalogue of 52 antibiotics with reported resistance, 107 genes, transcription factors and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) involved in multiple drug resistance of this pathogen. Each gene page provides detailed information about its resistance mechanisms, while antibiotic page consists of summary, chemical description and structural descriptors with links to external public databases like GO, CDD, DEG, Ecocyc, KEGG, Drug Bank, PubChem and UniProt. Moreover, the database integrates this reductive information to holistic data such as strain-specific and segment-specific pathogenic islands and operons. In addition, the database offers rich user interface for the visualisation and retrieval of information using various search criteria such as sequence, keyword, image and class search.Conclusionsu-CARE is aimed to cater to the needs of researchers working in the field of antimicrobial drug resistance with minimal knowledge of bioinformatics. This database is also intended as a guide book to medical practitioners to avoid use of antibiotics against which resistance has already been reported inE. coli.The database is available from:http://www.e-bioinformatics.net/ucare