Lastly, the biological coverage of pathway annotations should be considered. Across databases, similarly-named pathways can exhibit vast differences in constitution while differently-named pathways can exhibit significant overlap. As a result, investigators should attempt to match study goals with database coverage. For example, specialized, high-granularity databases are most useful for candidate studies of intricate signaling pathways, while canonical pathway collections (representing well-established pathways) provide a broad biological scope well-suited for screening-oriented studies.
