Entering edit mode
10.6 years ago
Christian
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3.1k
Looking at the update information at http://david.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/helps/update.html, the latest update was Sept 2009.
Also, a question in the DAVID user forum dating back to November 2013 and asking why the knowledgebase is not updated more regularly did not receive any answer by the database maintainers.
All this is rather worrisome and makes me wonder how appropriate it is to continue using DAVID for gene set enrichment analysis.
Edit: I should add that I find DAVID a great resource and it would be very sad to see it go.
Did you try contacting the DAVID bioinformatics team? There are three personal email addresses there. Perhaps you could try that and report back what you find.
Yes, sent an e-mail today and will post the answer here.
Soooo... anything?
No reply yet from any of the three DAVID Bioinformatic Team members listed at http://david.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/content.jsp?file=Contact.html. Does not look good so far.
I called the numbers for Rich Lempicki, and Da-Wei Huang listed on the contact page last week. Both had voice mail boxes identifying themselves as being from the "DAVID bioinformatics lab" as if it is still an active and staffed entity. They haven't returned my calls. I've approached Rich Lempicki twice via google-plus in reference to the DAVID update issue over the last few months. No response. I don't have time to continue with a dialing campaign at the moment, but I'm curious to know if there is some empirical way to determine if the database has been updated by looking at the data itself. i.e. is there some piece of information that can be mined from the database that can be tied to a date. For instance some GO term or a GO term/gene relationship that didn't exist in 2009, but was introduced in 2011, would suggest that the database was updated in 2011.
I'm also keen to hear thoughts on this. DAVID is often recommended (including on this website) but it does seem quite out of date. I'd be quite interested if anyone has good data comparing using DAVID to something like topGO with the current version of GO.db from Bioconductor (updated bi-annually).
The software was written by people contracted to NIAID by SAIC-Frederick. It might be that the contract expired or has since changed. The lab that wrote this software was also contracted to do Affy arrays for NIAID. I was under the impression that the NIAID array service lab was not located at NCI, but they may have split their Affy and Agilent facilites.
NIH has the head of that lab Richard A. Lempicki listed under DHHS/NIH/NIAID/DCR/CCRB. However the CCRB doesn't list him on the webpage: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/about/findingpeople/dcr/Pages/CCRB.aspx The linkedin profile of the DAVID bioinformatics lab, Da-Wei Huang, M.D., still has his linkedin page listed as such. So I'm not sure.
I sent an email too, but worse case I can always walk over there and knock on the door.
Oh, that's the best case. You should totally do it. I was thinking of sending email to Richard A. Lempicki at Leidos Biomedical (his current affiliation) to see what's up. If I could walk over there I'd do it in a second. I might start calling phone numbers, there are a few listed.
yes please, would be great if you could walk over and let us know about the current status and future plans here.
Thanks for the background info. Look forward to anything you might here!
Soooo... did you find anyone?
Haven't had a chance yet, I'll try to get over during lunch today.
yes, please
I looked into this and I can confirm with 90% certainty that DAVID is dead. First, the forum has not had new "news" since March 2015: https://david.ncifcrf.gov/forum/viewforum.php?f=10
Second, at the bottom of the announcement of their award in 2013, it says Dr. Dawei Huang is the lead, not the names on the contact page. https://david.ncifcrf.gov/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1254
Third, I was able to find Dr. Huang's LinkedIn page, which indicates he left in February 2015, which correlates to the forum ceasing updates. https://www.linkedin.com/in/huang-da-wei-5723295
Is there a suitable replacement yet?
In terms of replacements, MyGene.info serves up gene annotations as a web service and can provide a lot of the same data types as DAVID, and is kept up-to-date. It's fast, there's an API, and there are clients for it in R and python. Other peeps on Biostar have used it for Gene ID conversion, get GO terms, pathways, and more.
I can't see how MyGene.info is currently a replacement for DAVID. It is for querying/retrieving gene annotation data, whereas DAVID performs gene set enrichment analysis.