OBJECTIVES: Nowadays, as the amounts of biological data are rapidly increasing, bioinformatics has become one of the important research issues. The bioinformatics data sources are, however, distributed and heterogeneous, and therefore, often poorly integrated and difficult to use together. As many bioinformatics analyses need to make use of multiple information sources, the problem of integration of bioinformatics data sources has become an important one. The purpose of this paper is to present an integration system for bioinformatics data sources. METHODS: To solve this problem, we present an integration system for bioinformatics data sources using a global MDR, which provides users with efficiency and convenience as if they use one system. We deal with the extraction of data elements for bioinformatics MDRs by using ISO 11179 mandatory attributes. RESULTS: A global bioinformatics MDR schema for given MDRs and the results of query processing are presented. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed system and concepts in this paper may be a good solution for the integration of diverse bioinformatics data sources.
Computational Biology ; Information Storage and Retrieval

Food allergy is an immune-mediated adverse reaction that occurs mainly by food ingestion. Some children with food allergies manifest fatal symptoms like anaphylaxis. Oral immunotherapy (OIT) may offer an effective therapeutic modality for persistent and severe forms of food allergies. We report our experience with OIT in 3 patients with IgE-mediated hen’s egg allergy. Our treatment strategy consists of 1–3 days of initial escalation, 47 to 65 weeks of build-up phase, and 1 year of maintenance phase. Lactobacillus plantarum CJLP133, 1×1010 colony-forming unit/day was taken during OIT. As a result, 1 patient achieved successful desensitization, and 1 patient reached maintenance therapy, but did not obtain desensitization. In addition, 1 patient withdrew from treatment due to anxiety symptoms. Despite the limited number of patients, we experienced and herein presented 3 cases of OIT in egg allergy. More trials of OIT need to be performed as a treatment option in Korean children with food allergies.

We aimed to investigate associations of dietary diversity (DD) with gut microbial diversity and the development of hen's egg allergy (HEA) in infants. We enrolled 68 infants in a highrisk group and 32 infants in a control group based on a family history of allergic diseases. All infants were followed from birth until 12 months of age. We collected infant feeding data, and DD was defined using 3 measures: the World Health Organization definition of minimum DD, food group diversity, and food allergen diversity. Gut microbiome profiles and expression of cytokines were evaluated by bacterial 16S rRNA sequencing and real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. High DD scores at 3 and 4 months were associated with a lower risk of developing HEA in the high-risk group, but not in the control group. In the high-risk group, high DD scores at 3, 4, and 5 months of age were associated with an increase in Chao1 index at 6 months. We found that the gene expression of IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, and IL-8 were higher among infants who had lower DD scores compared to those who had higher DD scores in high-risk infants. Additionally, high-risk infants with a higher FAD score at 5 months of age showed a reduced gene expression of IL-13. Increasing DD within 6 months of life may increase gut microbial diversity, and thus reduce the development of HEA in infants with a family history of allergic diseases.