Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens to Release New Website

BLACKSBURG, Va., August 3, 2011 – The Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens (MIEP) at VBI has launched an interactive new website that will provide users with a unique opportunity to view gut pathogen and immune cell response interactions online. MIEP Web Portal 2.0 provides an enhanced web-based experimental environment to disseminate MIEP’s new modeling tools, data, models and publications.

The new website will make immune regulatory networks available in CellPublisher, a dynamic interface that enables viewing of inter- and intracellular interactions at various levels of complexity via a Google maps-like interface. Researchers can include useful links to information at higher levels of complexity, which can be viewed at various nodes by simple mouse rollover. Each node is annotated and can be found both on the map and on the right-hand sidebar. In addition, each node displays a JMOL 3D protein animation with direct links to PubMed and PDB that enhance MIEP’s publication search capabilities.

Reactions (i.e., the edges connecting each node) are critical components of MIEP’s modeling efforts because they link molecules together and help create a functional network. The MIEP team has extended CellPublisher’s original capabilities by facilitating reaction annotation. The new MIEP website release provides an online interactive user-friendly representation of immunological models with:

• Easy navigation through species and reactions with zoom-in, zoom-out, drag-and-move functions;
• Easy knowledge discovery through rich annotations of species and reactions placed on the models;
• Easy remote collaborations through web browsers that are supported by PCs, Macs, Smart phones, and many other devices.

“From project initiation in October, 2010 MIEP has made a significant amount of progress in the creation of a user-friendly web-based experimental environment that allows immunologists and infectious disease experts to navigate easily through models, real-time learning and research collaboration. The environment provided by the new MIEP Web Portal is consistent with the Center’s mission of understanding mechanisms underlying host responses. Future website upgrades will include developing user interfaces for MIEP’s modeling tools (COPASI and ENISI) which will further accelerate immunological research and discovery such modeling modeling CD4+ T cell differentiation.” Said Dr. Bassaganya-Riera, an Associate Professor at VBI, Principal Investigator of MIEP, and Director of the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory.

Please visit the new MIEP Web Portal at www.modelingimmunity.org.
MIEP is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. HHSN272201000056C to VBI.

About NIMML

The NIMML Institute is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit public charity foundation focused on a transdisciplinary, team-science approach to precision medicine at the interface of immunology, inflammation, and metabolism. The NIMML Institute team has led numerous large-scale transdisciplinary projects and is dedicated to solving important societal problems by combining the expertise of immunologists, computational biologists, toxicologists, modelers, translational researchers, and molecular biologists. The Institute is headquartered in Blacksburg, VA. For more information, please visit www.nimml.org or contact [email protected].