If the proverbial blind men were scientists, they would have described their respective parts of the elephant well. Its epigenome, genome, transcriptome, proteome and glycome would continually be analyzed with ever-increasing accuracy. A plethora of databases would make these findings easily accessible and encourage other researchers to contribute. And yet despite this detailed knowledge, we would still be a long way from understanding how all these parts act in concert to make an elephant.

Integrating the parts to define the whole. Credit: Wildlife Stock Pictures

The challenge is to integrate knowledge gained in different areas to appreciate how each aspect contributes to the workings of a whole organism. The bottleneck to achieve this goal is no longer a lack of data, but the lack of ingenuity, computational means and financial support to integrate them in a 'meta-database'. Efforts toward this goal are certainly underway in many fields, evidenced, for example, by databases that connect clinical phenotypes with genome structure, gene sequence and expression profiles. To reach true depth of information, functional networks should integrate different approaches and, for example, enrich datasets on an interactome with genomic and proteomic data as well as cellular localization.

Let us allow ourselves to dream about the extent of information a true 'meta-database' could provide; a scientist starts a search with, for example, a protein of choice and with a few mouse clicks has a wealth of information at her disposal: gene sequence, epigenetic status, expression in different tissues, together with the whole proteome and interactome in that tissue, its functional role, the binding to other proteins, post-translational modifications, its role in disease, common mutations as well as available resources such as knock out animals, and more.

We have all the bits and pieces to realize this dream: what is needed is a way to link current databases into an easily accessible meta-network so people can optimally use knowledge generated outside their own box of expertise and integrate it all to decipher the big picture.