Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Database (Oxford). 2012 Mar 20;2012:bas006. doi: 10.1093/database/bas006. Print 2012.
Over the past several decades, rapid developments in both molecular and information technology have collectively increased our ability to understand molecular recognition. One emerging area of interest in molecular recognition research includes the isolation of aptamers. Aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acid or amino acid polymers that recognize and bind to targets with high affinity and selectivity. While research has focused on collecting aptamers and their interactions, most of the information regarding experimental methods remains in the unstructured and textual format of peer reviewed publications. To address this, we present the Aptamer Base, a database that provides detailed, structured information about the experimental conditions under which aptamers were selected and their binding affinity quantified. The open collaborative nature of the Aptamer Base provides the community with a unique resource that can be updated and curated in a decentralized manner, thereby accommodating the ever evolving field of aptamer research. DATABASE URL: http://aptamer.freebase.com.
在过去几十年中，分子和信息技术的快速发展共同提高了我们对分子识别的理解能力。分子识别研究中一个新兴的领域包括适体的分离。适体是单链核酸或氨基酸聚合物，能够以高亲和力和选择性识别并结合靶标。虽然研究集中在收集适体及其相互作用上，但关于实验方法的大部分信息仍以同行评审出版物的非结构化和文本格式存在。为了解决这个问题，我们提出了适体库，这是一个提供关于适体选择和结合亲和力定量的实验条件的详细、结构化信息的数据库。适体库的开放协作性质为社区提供了一个独特的资源，可以以去中心化的方式进行更新和维护，从而适应适体研究这一不断发展的领域。数据库网址：http://aptamer.freebase.com。
