PKProject: A Physiological Social Network

Biological databases exist, but to our knowledge, there is no physiological equivalent. The Physiology Knowledge Project (PKProject) utilizes social network paradigms to represent unidirectional physiological relationships and categorical data with metadata. The network contains bricks, states, and categories. Bricks are base physiological components, such as cardiac output, serum calcium levels, etc. Bricks have states that represent different circumstances—diseases, validation, etc. States contain any number of fields, which represent any data (i.e.: transport maximum, alveolar ventilation, etc.) that is important to understanding physiological significance of the brick. The PKProject's strength is relating bricks to other bricks. For example, Angiotensin II (AII) directly affects Aldosterone secretion, but Aldosterone does not directly affect AII secretion. Relationships let users investigate bricks in context to one another. Bricks may belong to categories (i.e.: calcium homeostasis, heart, renal failure, etc.), enhancing physiological understanding. References, relationship data, and category relationships are in development. Supported by NSF EPSCoR.