SNP information was utilized from NCBI dbSNP Build 126. For each article, abstract and related information such as PMID numbers, journal name, authors’ name and title also were stored in dbPTB. We used the ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA, Ingenuity® Systems, BGJ398 in vitro www.ingenuity.com) to identify pathways and networks involving the genes we identified with significant evidence for their roles in preterm birth. We included the genes and genetic variants identified by curation

and in public databases, largely transcriptome wide array data sets[5, 6] and some proteomic analyses related to preterm birth.[7] The genes identified by the ingenuity pathway analysis were entered into the Kyoto NVP-BEZ235 datasheet Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. We extracted 31,018 articles dealing with PTB from PubMed using SciMiner.

The ‘filtered set’ included 980 articles with likely information from 1200 genes. We ‘accepted’ 142 articles described by a total of 960 unique MeSH terms. These articles provided associations of 186 genes with preterm birth that were accepted as statistically valid by the publishers and the curation team. We next imported 215 genes from both published and public databases containing array data and data from other proteomic analyses. Lastly, we identified and included an additional 216 genes based on the interpolation from pathway analysis. These genes were contained in 173 unique pathways. The work flow supporting retrieval of genes from the literature and public pheromone databases and gene interpolation from pathway analysis is shown in Fig. 1. These results are all retrievable from the publicly available database for preterm birth http://ptbdb.cs.brown.edu/dbPTBv1.php. We have also included the 156,963 SNPs contained with the genomic and flanking regions of each gene in dbPTB. We physically mapped the genomic location for genes in dbPTB. The chromosomes and the number of genes mapped to each are

shown in Fig. 2. We identified a total of 25 networks. Several networks including ‘Inflammatory Response, Small Molecule Biochemistry, Cellular Development, Hematological System Development and Function, Cellular Function and Maintenance, Cardiovascular Disease, Connective Tissue Development and Function, Drug Metabolism, Genetic Disorder’ represented the largest portion of interaction domains among the major networks detected. Database for preterm birth allows investigators interested in preterm birth to pursue several query strategies to search related articles, genes, SNPs, chromosomes or keywords against the MeSH terms and abstracts of the curated articles. This includes the authors, the title of the articles, name of the published journal and the link to the original source. There are links to Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics and HGNC.