Bioinformatics and database resources in hepatology.

Lately, advances in high-throughput technologies in biomedical research have led to a dramatic increase in the accessibility of molecular insights at multiple biological levels in hepatology. Much of this information is available in publications, but an increasing number of large-scale analyses are currently being stored in databases. Scopes of these databases are very divergent and may range from large, general databases collecting information on almost every known disease, to very specialized databases covering only a specific liver disease or aspect of hepatology. Over recent years, these bioinformatics data repositories have rapidly evolved into an essential aid for molecular hepatology. However, although publicly available through the internet, many of these databases are only known to a few experts. To facilitate access to these resources, the publicly available databases supporting research on liver diseases are summarized in this review.