Androgen-responsive gene database: integrated knowledge on androgen-responsive genes.

Androgen signaling plays an important role in many biological processes. Androgen Responsive Gene Database (ARGDB) is devoted to providing integrated knowledge on androgen-controlled genes. Gene records were collected on the basis of PubMed literature collections. More than 6000 abstracts and 950 original publications were manually screened, leading to 1785 human genes, 993 mouse genes, and 583 rat genes finally included in the database. All the collected genes were experimentally proved to be regulated by androgen at the expression level or to contain androgen-responsive regions. For each gene important details of the androgen regulation experiments were collected from references, such as expression change, androgen-responsive sequence, response time, tissue/cell type, experimental method, ligand identity, and androgen amount, which will facilitate further evaluation by researchers. Furthermore, the database was integrated with multiple annotation resources, including National Center for Biotechnology Information, Gene Ontology, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway, to reveal the biological characteristics and significance of androgen-regulated genes. The ARGDB web site is mainly composed of the Browse, Search, Element Scan, and Submission modules. It is user friendly and freely accessible at http://argdb.fudan.edu.cn. Preliminary analysis of the collected data was performed. Many disease pathways, such as prostate carcinogenesis, were found to be enriched in androgen-regulated genes. The discovered androgen-response motifs were similar to those in previous reports. The analysis results are displayed in the web site. In conclusion, ARGDB provides a unified gateway to storage, retrieval, and update of information on androgen-regulated genes.