MORPHIN (Model Organisms Projected on a Human Integrated Gene Network) is a web-based bioinformatics tool to study human diseases using model organism genes. MORPHIN harnesses model organisms to investigate human diseases by projecting information from model organism studies on a human integrated gene network, HumanNet.

MORPHIN enables the user to test the followings:
1. If there exists any related human disease or biological process to the input model organism gene list based on evolutionary conserved pathways, or to assess the relevance of the input pathway as an appropriate model to study a target human disease.
2. If novel human disease gene candidates derived from the input model organisms pathway are functionally coupled in the gene network to the known disease genes.

MORPHIN differs from a simple association mapping between model organism pathways and human diseases for the following reasons:
1. It explicitly overlays model organism pathways on a human gene network.
2. It searches for related human diseases with high sensitivity by using a network-based gene set association algorithm, RIDDLE.
3. It can visualize the resulting disease gene networks incorporating novel disease gene candidates from the model organism studies.

MORPHIN search starts by submitting a list of model organism genes to the submit new query page. The search will return the following results:
1. Human orthologs for the submitted query genes of model organisms
2. Significantly related human diseases or biological processes to the input gene list
3. Prioritized input query genes for each disease pathways
4. A network of disease genes and input query genes

See the Tutorial page for the detailed descriptions.

Gene sets and search algorithms used by MORPHIN

AlgorithmGene set database
Fisher's Exact TestOMIM, Disease Ontology, GWAS catalog, Genetic Association Database, GO biological process, KEGG pathway

MORPHIN was developed by Lee Lab at Yonsei University, Korea and the Marcotte Lab at University of Texas at Austin, USA.

How to cite MORPHIN:
MORPHIN: a web tool for human disease research by projecting model organisms on a human integrated gene network Sohyun Hwang, Eiru Kim, Sunmo Yang, Edward M. Marcotte, and Insuk Lee, Nucl. Acids Res. (2014) First published online: May 26, 2014

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea grant (2010-0017649, 2012M3A9B4028641, 2012M3A9C7050151).