Resource of Asian Primary Immunodeficiency Disease (RAPID):

This resource is developed as a platform for genomic and proteomic investigations in Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (PID). It also initiated a network of PID research in Asia. RAPID is constructed as a web-based compendium of molecular alterations in PID, ( http://rapid.rcai.riken.jp/). It provides detailed information pertaining to genes and proteins involved in primary immunodeficiency diseases including variation in sequences, altered expression of genes/proteins, protein-protein interactions, mouse modles and microarray gene-expression profiles in various organs of immune system. RAPID also hosts a tool called mutation viewer, which can predict deleterious and novel mutations and obtain mutation-based 3D structures for PID genes. Information contained in this database should help physicians and biomedical investigators involved in the area of PID.

We also described the development of an algorithm for prediction of candidate PID genes. Using RAPID as a discovery tool, using a support vector machine learning approach, we have predicted 1442 candidate PID genes using 69 binary features of 148 known PID genes and 3162 non-PID genes as a training data set. The power of this approach is illustrated by the fact that six of the predicted genes have recently been experimentally confirmed to be PID genes. The remaining genes in this predicted data set represent attractive candidates for testing in patients where the etiology cannot be ascribed to any of the known PID genes.