The laboratory of Bruce Conklin at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease has created a new collaboration tool called WikiPathways to focus on the use of biological pathways. The project, described in the current issue of PLoS Biology, follows the efforts of scientists to focus on new ways to better manage rapidly accumulating biological data and make it readily available. Biological pathways connect genes and proteins in systems that contribute to normal physiology and disease.
The Conklin team has chosen to develop a new community-based model for pathway curation. The project was jointly conceived and executed in a partnership with Chris Evelo's lab in Maastricht, Netherlands.
WikiPathways (http://www.wikipathways.org) is an open, collaborative platform for curating biological pathways. Building on the MediaWiki core that powers Wikipedia, the developers added a custom graphical pathway-editing tool and connections to major gene, protein and small molecule databases. The familiar web-based format makes it easy to participate in. More importantly, it facilitates broad participation by the scientific community in peer review, editorial curation and maintenance of the pathway content.
WikiPathways is seen to hand over the keys to the database, lower the technical and hierarchical barriers with creative support tools, and let the data producer organise the data. By allowing anyone to contribute and edit content, the scientists expect to increase the capacity for curation and better manage the increasing flood of data. It is observed that despite initial misgivings, Wikipedia has shown that these projects can succeed with the right balance of infrastructure, participation and administrative principles.
