The Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD) is a free, public resource that promotes understanding about the effects of environmental chemicals on human health.  Since Trey’s original Tip of the Week about CTD, we’ve added many new features we’d like to highlight.

* The redesigned CTD homepage makes navigation easier and more intuitive.  Check out the keyword quick search box on every page, and try the “All” setting to see the scope of information available at CTD.

* A new Data Status page uses tag clouds to display the updated content for that month.

* We are particularly pleased to announce new statistical analyses of CTD data.  Chemical pages now feature enriched Gene Ontology (GO) terms, garnered from the genes that interact with a chemical.  In this release, CTD connects over 5,000 enriched GO terms to more than 4,500 chemicals.  As well, now our inferred chemical-disease relationships are also statistically scored and ranked.  Both new features will help users explore and generate testable hypotheses about the biological effects of chemicals.

* GeneComps and ChemComps discover genes or chemicals with a similar toxicogenomic profile to your molecule of interest.  Learn more about this feature in our recent publication.

* Reactome data are now also included with KEGG, for a more comprehensive view of pathways affected by chemicals.

* VennViewer and MyGeneVenn are new tools that compare datasets for chemicals, diseases, or genes (including your own gene list) using Venn diagrams to discover shared and unique information.  These two visualization tools are a nice accompaniment to our original Batch Query tool for meta-analysis.

* The FAQ section under the “Help” menu provides examples of how to maximize your experience with CTD.

* Download our Resource Guide (pdf link) to keep as a handy reference card for CTD.

From the homepage, you can also subscribe to our monthly email newsletter to keep current with CTD’s growing content and features.  You can always contact us to request curation of your favorite chemical or paper.  And with our new “Author Alert” email program, we’ll even contact you to let you know when we’ve curated data from one of your publications in CTD.

We strive to be the best possible resource of chemical-gene-disease networks for the biological community, so feedback and input from users are of great importance to us.

- Allan Peter Davis