EMBL launches new resource for bioscience researchers
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has launched a free online resource called CiteXplore which links scientific literature to biological databases. There has long been a need in the biological sciences for a tool which integrates articles from scientific journals with databases containing biological information such as DNA and protein sequences, functions and structures of molecules and microarray data, say the developers of CiteXplore, 'When you are reading an abstract describing a specific gene or protein, typically you want more information on it, for example its sequence or its function, as well as easy access to the full paper,' explained Peter Stoehr, who coordinates CiteXplore. CiteXplore was developed by the EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). It brings together abstracts from a range of literature databases, including the European Patent Office, the US National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It then links these abstracts to the full text articles. A powerful text mining tool identifies biological terms in the text and links them directly to the relevant entry in the EBI's extensive biological databases. These include the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database which covers DNA and RNA sequences; UniProt, which contains information on protein structure and function; and ArrayExpress, which contains information on how genes are expressed. CiteXplore plans to extend the range of literature resources it covers to include domains such as plant science, agricultural and food sciences and to integrate it with the UK's PubMedCentral project, which was launched recently. The EBI is Europe's largest disseminator of biological information and the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures recently highlighted it in its Roadmap.
Countries
Germany