Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

Biomacromolecules form membraneless organelles through liquid-liquid phase separation in order to regulate the efficiency of particular biochemical reactions. Dysregulation of phase separation might result in pathological condensation or sequestration of biomolecules, leading to diseases. Thus, phase separation and phase separating factors may serve as drug targets for disease treatment. Nevertheless, such associations have not yet been integrated into phase separation related databases. Therefore, based on MloDisDB, a database for membraneless organelle factor-disease association previously developed by our lab, we constructed PhaSeDis, the phase separation-disease association database. We increased the number of phase separation entries from 52 to 185, and supplemented the evidence provided by the original article verifying the phase separation nature of the factors. Moreover, we included the information of interacting small molecules with low-throughput or high-throughput evidence that might serve as potential drugs for phase separation entries. PhaSeDis strives to offer comprehensive descriptions of each entry, elucidating how phase separating factors induce pathological conditions via phase separation and the mechanisms by which small molecules intervene. We believe that PhaSeDis would be very important in the application of phase separation regulation in treating related diseases. PhaSeDis is available at http://mlodis.phasep.pro.

Cells are compartmentalized by numerous membrane-bounded organelles and membraneless organelles (MLOs) to ensure temporal and spatial regulation of various biological processes. A number of MLOs, such as nucleoli, nuclear speckles and stress granules, exist as liquid droplets within the cells and arise from the condensation of proteins and RNAs via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). By concentrating certain proteins and RNAs, MLOs accelerate biochemical reactions and protect cells during stress, and dysfunction of MLOs is associated with various pathological processes. With the development in this field, more and more relations between the MLOs and diseases have been described; however, these results have not been made available in a centralized resource. Herein, we build MloDisDB, a database which aims to gather the relations between MLOs and diseases from dispersed literature. In addition, the relations between LLPS and diseases were included as well. Currently, MloDisDB contains 771 curated entries from 607 publications; each entry in MloDisDB contains detailed information about the MLO, the disease and the functional factor in the relation. Furthermore, an efficient and user-friendly interface for users to search, browse and download all entries was provided. MloDisDB is the first comprehensive database of the relations between MLOs and diseases so far, and the database is freely accessible at http://mlodis.phasep.pro/.