- The site will also feature various interactive visualisation tools to explore the chemical diversity of natural microbial products
- The team used big data to mine text, recruit qualified curators and review historical scientific literature going back to the early 20th century
According to a report published in the Simon Fraser University (SFU) website, Roger Linington, an associate professor SFU and a team of international collaborators have created an open source database called Natural Products Atlas which will contain information on nearly 25,000 natural compounds. It will also act a s a repository for the global scientific community.
Visualisation tools
The site will also feature various interactive visualisation tools to explore the chemical diversity of natural microbial products. It is fully searchable and downloadable and will let researchers to filter data from an array of various perspectives. Linington and his team of collaborators published an article in journal ACS Central Science to make the scientific community aware of the new database.
Big data to mine text, recruit qualified curators
The Linington Laboratory at SFU will maintain the Natural Products Atlas. It plans to create cross-platform links and upgarde further to speed up natural products research. Linington said that he expected that researchers will add approximately 1,600 new compounds to the database each year. He further added that existing databases are not designed for researchers to collaborate and share their discoveries with each other or to work on large-scale projects and broad-scale annotation.
As per the report, Linington and his team used big data to mine text, recruit qualified curators and review historical scientific literature going back to the early 20th century. Afer that, the team compiled and indexed a large portion of new and old research data.
