LINCS Workflow

Search LINCS metadata through APIs

What is an API?

An application programming interface (API) is a set of functions publicly available to the client of a software application. An API specifies the input and output for each function, but hides the implementation details. A web API is an API that uses the HTTP protocol.

For more information on APIs, please watch the following two videos from the BD2K-LINCS DCIC Coursera course:

RESTful API Part I
RESTful API Part II

The LINCS APIs

There are a number of LINCS web applications with APIs for searching through LINCS data in a variety of formats:

Web ApplicationDescriptionDocumentation
LINCS Data PortalUnified access to LINCS datasets and metadataDocumentation
piLINCSProteomics datasets (P100 and GCP) on PanoramaDocumentation
HMS LINCS DatabaseSmall molecules, antibodies, and cell linesDocumentation
CLUE PlatformAnnotations and perturbational signaturesDocumentation
HarmonizomeGenes or proteins and their functional terms, federated from over a hundred resourcesDocumentation
L1000CDS2Search similar gene signatures preprocessed from L1000 compound dataDocumentation
Examples of programmatic access of LINCS data with some of the currently available APIs

To obtain metadata about the kinase ROCK1:

To obtain metadata on hepatocellular carcinoma:

To obtain a list of perturbations applied by the P100 assay:

The CLUE API playground allows end consumers to visualize and interact with the API’s resources/services.


CLUE API Playground