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University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Biochemistry Department: Databases

A guide for those in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology. After using this guide, students in Biochemistry will be able to locate resources that are needed for their field of study.

Best Databases for Research

SciFinder

SciFinder is a research discovery application that provides integrated access to the world's most comprehensive and authoritative source of references, substances and reactions in chemistry and related sciences. You must register first to access database.


Scopus

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database including peer-reviewed titles from international publishers, Open Access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications and quality web sources. Subject coverage includes: Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology and Economics; Biological, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.


PubMed

Provides access to over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. Includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.


Web of Science (All Databases Search)

Easily search across all subscribed Web of Science databases simultaneously using a common set of search fields for the most comprehensive results. Web of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.

Related Databases

Biomolecular Structure Center

From the University of Washington School of Medicine. Resources of note include PARVATI (validation of structures containing TLS or other models of anisotropy), Raster3D (program suite for photorealistic molecular graphics), and TLSMD (inference of TLS motion from single crystal structures).


EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute.

Offers access to SRS, EMBL, TrEMBL, SWISS-PROT, RHdb, and MSD databases.


Enzyme Structures Database.

Contains known enzyme structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB).  


National Center for Biotechnological Information

From the National Library of Medicine. Includes GenBank, Entrez, Cancer Genome Database, Human Genome Database, etc. 


The Common Fund

From the National Institute of Health (NIH). Molecular Libraries and Imaging offers access to the large-scale screening capacity necessary to identify small molecules that could be optimized as chemical probes to study the functions of genes, cells, and biochemical pathways in health and disease.


Intramural Research Program 

From the National Institutes Health (NIH). Provides information on the NIH's structural biology research program.


The Official Kinemage Homepage

MAGE creators demonstrate 3-D animation of molecules; free software may be downloaded.


PubChem

Provides information on the biological activities of small molecules from NCBI's PubChem Substance, PubChem Compound, and PubChem BioAssay databases.


Protein Data Bank (PDB)

Protein Data Bank (PDB), Nucleic Acid Database (NDB), and related databases. The MIT Biology Hypertextbook. The Official Kinemage Homepage. MAGE creators demonstrate 3-D animation of molecules; free software may be downloaded.

About Databases

Databases are large, regularly updated files of articles from journals, magazines, and trade publications related to a specific subject or field. The databases listed to the left are related to biochemistry, science, and related fields.

Some database coverage overlaps (i.e., some databases collect the same articles from the same journals), but you will find different results by searching in different databases. To be comprehensive in your research, it's a good idea to search more than one database.