Activity type for micro-RNAs

[bgyori]

Currently micro-RNAs are extracted with transcriptional activity from databases (as subjects of RegulateAmount Statements). We should introduce a special activity type for the regulatory activity of micro-RNAs and extract them accordingly. There is no applicable activity type in BEL that we could adopt.

[cthoyt]

Do you think it would be worth adding something to the BEL language to better represent the types statements that are generally made about miRNA's?

[johnbachman]

Interesting question. How do you go about extending BEL for things like this? Is there a process for formalizing updates? I know @dexterpratt has some ideas about BEL extensions as well.

[cthoyt]

Technically, it's not hard to extend PyBEL, but Dexter proposed the idea of having modules that can be "imported" to the parser. That would require quite a bit of development to get right.

When it comes to these types of interactions, maybe it would make sense to make BEL statements like act(m(X), ma(regulatoryActivity)) =| p(Y). The appropriate term for regulatoryActivity could probably be matched to something in GO.

[cthoyt]

Just ran into this article: http://www.geneontology.org/page/microrna-go-annotation-manual. Might be relevant