Databases and Systems

Future Directions
Figure 4. KEGG as a deductive database for path computation.
Computing paths of reasoning
We have mentioned two specific examples of path computation problems: computing
multiple links in DBGET/LinkDB and computing chemical reaction pathways in
KEGG. This type of deduction from binary relations can further be extended to
include different types of relations that are summarized in Table 5.
Table 5. Different types of binary relations
While factual, similarity, and genomic relations are well computerized, the
majority of functional relations, such as pairs of interacting molecules and upstream-
downstream relationships in biochemical pathways, exist only in printed materials or
experts’ brains. In BRITE we have collected a small set of molecular interaction data
from primary literature, which is extremely labor intensive and requires expert
knowledge. We are also working on to develop computational technologies to
automatically extract pairs of interacting molecules from the written text. However,
an ultimate solution for fully computerizing interaction data would be direct
submission from the authors.
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