STITCH: interaction networks of chemicals and proteins

Abstract

The knowledge about interactions between proteins and small molecules is essential for the understanding of molecular and cellular functions. However, information on such interactions is widely dispersed across numerous databases and the literature. To facilitate access to this data, STITCH (‘search tool for interactions of chemicals’) integrates information about interactions from metabolic pathways, crystal structures, binding experiments and drug–target relationships. Inferred information from phenotypic effects, text mining and chemical structure similarity is used to predict relations between chemicals. STITCH further allows exploring the network of chemical relations, also in the context of associated binding proteins. Each proposed interaction can be traced back to the original data sources. Our database contains interaction information for over 68 000 different chemicals, including 2200 drugs, and connects them to 1.5 million genes across 373 genomes and their interactions contained in the STRING database. STITCH is available at http://stitch.embl.de/