2.4. Manipulating compound identifiers

Application: retrieving information about a compound

This section uses BioServices to demonstrate the interest of combining several services together within a single framework using the Python language as a glue language

2.4.1. Retrieve a compound identifier from KEGG, ChEBI and ChEMBL

Let us look at a compound called Geldanamycin that inhibits Hsp90. Let us search for information about that compound in several databases and manipulate the different identifiers.

First, let us retrieve information on KEGG database:

>>> from bioservices import *
>>> k = KEGG(verbose=False)

KEGG compounds have links to other databases. It is not systematic but the ChEBI database is often referenced. So we will want to convert the KEGG identifer to a ChEBI identifier. Later, we can convert a ChEBI to a ChEMBL identifier using another Web Service such as UniChem.

We can get a mapping dictionary from the KEGG compound to ChEBI as follows:

>>> map_kegg_chebi = k.conv("chebi", "compound")
>>> len(map_kegg_chebi) 
15845

>>> print(k.find("compound", "geldanamycin"))
cpd:C11222  Geldanamycin
cpd:C15823  Progeldanamycin

Let us look at the first one (KEGG id cpd:C11222). We can get lots of information from KEGG already by using:

>>> print(k.get("C11222"))

Form which, there is a link to other databases in particular ChEBI (ChEBI:5292). We could use the mapping dictionary created above:

>>> map_kegg_chebi['cpd:C11222']
'chebi:5292'

Unfortunately, there is no mapping function from KEGG to ChEMBL in KEGG Web Service.

However, BioServices provides access to the bioservices.unichem service. This service provides a useful mapping function from kegg to chembl:

>>> uni = UniChem()
>>> mapping = uni.get_mapping("kegg_ligand", "chembl")
>>> mapping['C11222']
'CHEMBL278315'

For sanity check, let us see that the ChEBI is indeed 5292 as given within the KEGG database:

>>> uni = UniChem()
>>> mapping = uni.get_mapping("kegg_ligand", "chebi")
>>> mapping['C11222']
'5292'

(2) In order to convert KEGG gene names into uniprot gene name, we can also use the UniProt web service from BioServices as follows:

>>> from bioservices import *
>>> u = UniProt()
>>> u.mapping(fr='ID', to='KEGG_ID', query="ZAP70_HUMAN")
{'ZAP70_HUMAN':  'hsa:7535'}

You can get accession number or protein name identifier from the KEGG identifier as follows:

>>> u.mapping(fr='KEGG_ID', to='ID', query='hsa:7535')
{'hsa7535': 'ZAP70_HUMAN'}
>>> u.mapping(fr='KEGG_ID', to='ACC', query='hsa:7535')
{'hsa7535': 'P43403'}