Federating Human Data Using Nextprot SPARQL

The neXtProt platform ( www nextprot org ), developed at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics the Swiss ELIXIR node, is a one stop shop for human proteins. neXtProt proposes solutions to explore, select and reuse available genomic, transcriptomic, mass spectrometry and antibody based proteomic data. The neXtProt team manually curates data from the literature (post translational modifications, variant phenotypes, protein protein interactions, etc and combines it with high quality omics data generated by systems biology projects using a single inter operable format. neXtProt data are FAIR ( Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), with full traceability ensured by extensive use of metadata. In the last four years, neXtProt has been promoting the use of SPARQL, a semantic query language for databases, to explore human data. Semantic technologies can help to generate innovative hypotheses where classical data mining tools have failed (protein function prediction, drug repositioning, etc.). In order to promote the use of semantic technologies as data mining tools for life sciences, neXtProt provides over 140 pre built queries and documentation of its data model to guide the user in his/her first steps. The use of SPARQL allows users to run federated queries across multiple resources relevant to human biology.