The “Target Class” categories can be found within the Causaly Targets > Specific Target filter. The filter enables further target classification based on protein functions/families such as enzymes, receptors, membrane transporters, etc. They are a part of Causaly’s custom target ontology and have been designed to give greater clarity on the types of targets that can influence a biomedical concept.
Figure 1: The “Target Classes” filter. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of results falling into the specific target classes.
Use Case: Signaling proteins affecting epilepsy
To explore this use case in Causaly, use Intelligent Search to find genes and proteins affecting epilepsy. The Causaly Targets filters are pre-selected in this search to return all the specific genes/proteins and gene/protein families affecting epilepsy. Expand the ‘Specific target’ filter to see the specific target classes covered.
Refine the search results by clearing the current selection and specifying a category of interest – signaling proteins in this case (Figure 2).
Explore the search results here .
Figure 2: Signaling proteins affecting epilepsy.
Further expand the selection to specify intercellular signaling proteins, hormones, or neurotransmitters (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Further refine results to a sub-category of signaling proteins.