A week in the Life of a ChEMBL Biological Curator - Tuesday

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Ever wonder what a biological curator for ChEMBL does? Read on to find out what we were up to on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during the course of a week in early June.

A typical Tuesday in Sally’s week

First thing in the morning of Tuesday 9th June, I dedicate some time replying to Helpdesk enquiries and catching up on any new GitHub data issues. One user reports an assay that has been assigned to the wrong target in ChEMBL. I briefly double check the source document to verify the information and thank the user for reporting the error. Luckily, it’s an error that’s easy to fix, so I write an SQL update statement to correct the target in our internal production database. Then I run a brief check to see if the same issue affected any other assays in ChEMBL. Updating this information ensures that the next ChEMBL release will incorporate the fix. It’s also a good reminder that user feedback plays an important role in helping us identify and correct the occasional error that slips through.

Afterwards, it’s time for our weekly group meeting across the Chemical Biology Services team. Usually a colleague presents their latest work, but today is all about finalising the preparations for ChEMBL's upcoming 2nd User Group meeting that starts tomorrow. Back at my desk, I spend the next hour or two working on overhauling the existing documentation for the ChEMBL website. This is one of the tasks where I’m encouraged to use LLMs to help speed things up as I’m preparing a first draft. (Keep an eye out for upcoming changes to the documentation!)

In the afternoon, I meet up with two of my colleagues to review the issues I identified yesterday in the deposited dataset and prepare a feedback document for the depositor. We go through the notes together, deciding which issues can be resolved internally and which require follow-up. This feedback is then emailed to the depositor for review and corrections. For the final meeting of the day, my colleagues and I jump on a video call to onboard a new data depositor. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about an incoming dataset. We talk through the scientific context of the data, the types of assays and measurements involved, and any challenges we might run into during the deposition process. We also explain the information and tables we require, answer questions about our submission procedures, and help ensure that the dataset is prepared in a way that avoids unnecessary back-and-forth later on. 

It's been a meeting-heavy day, but one that shows how much ChEMBL relies on collaboration between curators, developers, users and depositors.

Salesia Werner