Chemistry Central Blog
Open database for insect semiochemicals
To continue our theme of providing overviews of free-to-access chemical databases, I feel Pherobase, a interesting database of insect behaviour modifying chemicals, to be well worth a mention.
The database, hosted by the chemical ecology group, HortResearch, New Zealand, is aimed at "convert[ing] scientific data and knowledge from the literature and publish[ing] peer-reviewed information about behavioural modifying chemicals in insects into electronically searchable database entries." Chemical signals are the main channel of communication in arthropods, especially insects, finding uses in, amongst other things, sexual attraction and defence. The project's author believes the database will "...definitely aid and [accelerate] the process of semiochemicals' (Ed: chemical substance that carries a message) identification and... will provide an overview of the hetero-specific overlap in the chemical signals between different animal groups."
The database, which has now grown to over 50,000 entries - of which 3,000 contain details on molecules -, also contains mass spectral data on over 1,500 of the compounds. Users can search by text, or browse a large number of categories, including genus, species, and functional group, but also application, such as 'lure and kill' and 'mating disruption'. In addition to having an interactive Jmol molecular model, each compound page contains links to spectra, as well as references regarding synthesis and behavioural function.
Pherobase is yet another
example of a free-to-access database, which benefits from being enriched and augmented by contributions from
interested specialists, and that in spite of attracting a somewhat
niche audience, nonetheless has high practical utility.
***
On a related note, it is
worth highlighting Anthony Williams' (ChemSpider) review of the
status of public chemical databases that was recently published in BioMed
Central's Current Opinion in Drug Discovery and
Development. The following is an excerpt from the abstract:
“...The increasing array of chemistry-related resources that are now available provides chemists with a direct path to the information that was previously accessed via library services and was limited by commercial and costly resources. The diversity of the information that can be accessed online is expanding at a dramatic rate, and the support for publicly available resources offers significant opportunities in terms of the benefits to science and society. While the data online do not generally meet the quality standards of manually curated sources, there are efforts underway to gather scientists together and 'crowdsource' an improvement in the quality of the available data...” Public chemical compound databases: Current Opinion in Drug Discovery and Development 2008, 11:393-404 (18 April 2008).
Posted by Gino D'Oca at 16:14 Comments (0)