'To address this problem, Cuzick et al. used the Pathogen-Host Interactions database (PHI-base), which curates knowledge from the text, tables and figures published in over 200 journals, as a case study. A framework was developed that could capture the many observable traits (phenotype annotations) for interactions and link them directly to the combination of genotypes involved in those interactions across multiple scales – ranging from microscopic to macroscopic. This demonstrated that it was possible to build a framework of software tools to enable curation of interactions between species in more detail than had been done before.'