The current state of SubtiWiki, the database for the model organism Bacillus subtilis

Bacillus subtilis is a Gram-positive model bacterium with extensive documented annotation. However, with the rise of high-throughput techniques, the amount of complex data being generated every year has been increasing at a fast pace. Thus, having platforms ready to integrate and give a representation to these data becomes a priority. To address it, SubtiWiki (http://subtiwiki.uni-goettingen.de/) was created in 2008 and has been growing in data and viewership ever since. With millions of requests every year, it is the most visited B. subtilis database, providing scientists all over the world with curated information about its genes and proteins, as well as intricate protein–protein interactions, regulatory elements, expression data and metabolic pathways. However, there is still a large portion of annotation to be unveiled for some biological elements. Thus, to facilitate the development of new hypotheses for research, we have added a Homology section covering potential protein homologs in other organisms. Here, we present the recent developments of SubtiWiki and give a guided tour of our database and the current state of the data for this organism.