iDog: An Integrated Resource for Domestic Dogs and Wild Canids

ADMIN  Feb 20, 2019


Recently, the dog database — iDog  was developed in the BIG Data Center at Beijing Institute of Genomics  (BIG), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in cooperation with Kunming  Institute of Zoology, and was published online in Nucleic Acids Research. The iDog is the first  integrated resource dedicated to domestic dogs and wild canids,  providing a variety of data services and online analysis tools to dog  researchers around the world. 

Domestic  dog is one of the most diverse species in nature, and is also a  fundamental model for many heritable human diseases. In recent years,  with the development of genomics technology, more and more canine  genomes have been analyzed, and biological data on canine genes, SNPs,  breeds, diseases, gene expressions and so on have been released in large  numbers. However, there is no database that provides complete data  service for canids, which is inconvenient for this kind of research.  

The  iDog incorporates a variety of omics data to provide unified data  sharing service. It also integrates sequence alignment tools for data  analyses and a genome browser for data visualization. iDog will not only  benefit the global dog research community, but also provide access to a  user-friendly consolidation of dog information to a large number of dog  enthusiasts. 

The iDog has  good scalability and sustainability, and hosts various databases  including SNP database based on 127 resequenced domestic dog samples,  canine gene database containing 32,220 genes, gene expression database  based on RNA-Seq data, literature on canine diseases, homolog gene  database on Dog-Human diseases, database on genome sequences assemblies  for canids, etc. iDog will continue to integrate more omics data and  update high-quality data sets under the background of Dog10K project, so  as to gradually transform them into a repository of information and  knowledge for basic research on canids. 

This  research was supported by Strategic Priority Research Program of the  Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of  China, National Key Research Program of China, etc. 

The data types curated in iDog (Image by the BIG Data Center)