YiNet: An Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine Platform for Viral Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Viral infectious diseases (VIDs) impose a heavy burden on global public health. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has previously and is currently contributing to the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Omics and information technology enable the precise identification of virus characteristics, virus-host interactions and TCM mechanisms. In this study, we constructed the YiNet platform to better integrate the novel techniques and historical experience of TCM in infectious diseases. YiNet comprises three modules: knowledge base, database and toolkit. The YiNet knowledge base involves 43 VIDs, thereby systematically integrating the knowledge regarding viruses, host symptoms and TCM and Western medicine (commonly used chemical drugs, 6,899 herbs and 2,481 formulas). The YiNet database module includes multiple databases, comprising 57,340 genome sequences of 45,791 viral strains and 5,726 multi-omics datasets such as RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and ATAC-seq from different tissues and cell models. It also integrates 1,105 real-world TCM clinical cases. We adopted visual analysis tool to investigate pathogen-host-herb relationships. To explore pharmacological mechanisms for the core herbs, we added formula data mining and network pharmacology analysis pipelines and visualisation tools. YiNet can facilitate the mechanistic study of TCM and drug development for VIDs. The YiNet platform is publicly available at http://yinet.gene.ac/.