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Unified Human Interactome (UniHI) (http://www.unihi.org) is a database for retrieval, analysis and visualization of human molecular interaction networks. Its primary aim is to provide a comprehensive and easy-to-use platform for network-based investigations to a wide community of researchers in biology and medicine. Here, we describe a major update (version 7) of the database previously featured in NAR Database Issue. UniHI 7 currently includes almost 350,000 molecular interactions between genes, proteins and drugs, as well as numerous other types of data such as gene expression and functional annotation. Multiple options for interactive filtering and highlighting of proteins can be employed to obtain more reliable and specific network structures. Expression and other genomic data can be uploaded by the user to examine local network structures. Additional built-in tools enable ready identification of known drug targets, as well as of biological processes, phenotypes and pathways enriched with network proteins. A distinctive feature of UniHI 7 is its user-friendly interface designed to be utilized in an intuitive manner, enabling researchers less acquainted with network analysis to perform state-of-the-art network-based investigations.

In recent years, remarkable progress has been made toward the systematic charting of human protein interactions. The utilization of the generated interaction data remained however challenging for biomedical researchers due to lack of integration of currently available resources. To facilitate the direct access and analysis of the human interactome, we have developed the Unified Human Interactome (UniHI) database. It provides researchers with a user-friendly Web-interface and integrates interaction data from 12 major resources in its latest version, establishing one of the largest catalogs for human PPIs worldwide. At present, UniHI houses over 250,000 distinct interactions between 22,300 unique proteins and is publically available at http://www.unihi.org.

Human protein interaction maps have become important tools of biomedical research for the elucidation of molecular mechanisms and the identification of new modulators of disease processes. The Unified Human Interactome database (UniHI, http://www.unihi.org) provides researchers with a comprehensive platform to query and access human protein-protein interaction (PPI) data. Since its first release, UniHI has considerably increased in size. The latest update of UniHI includes over 250,000 interactions between approximately 22,300 unique proteins collected from 14 major PPI sources. However, this wealth of data also poses new challenges for researchers due to the complexity of interaction networks retrieved from the database. We therefore developed several new tools to query, analyze and visualize human PPI networks. Most importantly, UniHI allows now the construction of tissue-specific interaction networks and focused querying of canonical pathways. This will enable researchers to target their analysis and to prioritize candidate proteins for follow-up studies.

Systematic mapping of protein-protein interactions has become a central task of functional genomics. To map the human interactome, several strategies have recently been pursued. The generated interaction datasets are valuable resources for scientists in biology and medicine. However, comparison reveals limited overlap between different interaction networks. This divergence obstructs usability, as researchers have to interrogate numerous heterogeneous datasets to identify potential interaction partners for proteins of interest. To facilitate direct access through a single entry gate, we have started to integrate currently available human protein interaction data in an easily accessible online database. It is called UniHI (Unified Human Interactome) and is available at http://www.mdc-berlin.de/unihi. At present, it is based on 10 major interaction maps derived by computational and experimental methods. It includes more than 150,000 distinct interactions between more than 17 000 unique human proteins. UniHI provides researchers with a flexible integrated tool for finding and using comprehensive information about the human interactome.