News for all the chemists out there is that Elsevier have sold MDL to Symyx
(including Beilstein/Crossfire) .
What does that mean? Well I guess it may lead to better bench tools for chemists and better integration with lab hardware/software. Will it mean less emphasis on database development? Possibly though MDL’s databases never seemed to be big sellers somehow (with the exception of Beilstein of course).
I’ve always thought that MDL interfaces could do with some cleaning up and modernization (not that I have had much of a change to play with Discoverygate which of course is their web interface) so hopefully with a better understanding of the needs of bench chemist’s that’s what Symyx will do.
MDL never seemed a terribly good fit with Elsevier somehow whose primary markets are not chemists. Time will tell if it turns out to be better or worse for customers.
Categories: Chemistry · Database · Pharmaceutical · Search Engines · Searching
The Human Metabolome Database is a database of information about small molecule metabolites found in the human body. It is maintained by a team at the University of Alberta, Canada.
It links to three kinds of data: 1) chemical data, 2) clinical data, and 3) molecular biology/biochemistry data. There are currently over 2100 metabolite entries, linked to over 5500 protein (and DNA) sequences
More information about the project can be found here.
Categories: Database · Reference · metabolism
The Big Picture Book of Viruses is a great website if you want to find pictures of particular viruses - and find classification information. Pages are ordered by Name, Structure/Genome, Host and Disease makeing it easy to find what you are looking for with whatever starting information you have. This page is a useful page if you want to quickly look up the causative agent of a disease
Categories: Database · Images · Reference · Virology
Probably a fairly well known reference to many of you - the OMIM database is a database of diseases with a genetic component. It is maintained by Johns Hopkins University. Its a good place to look up information on diseases and to also find synonyms of disease names.
It can be searched via this webpage
Categories: Biotechnology · Database · Genetics · Reference
