Biological Databases- Integration of Life Science Data

Abstract

Over the past few decades, major advances in the field of molecular biology, coupled with advances in genomic technologies, have led to an explosive growth in biological information generated by the scientific community. Biological databases are libraries of life sciences information, collected from scientific experiments, published literature, high-throughput experiment technology, and computational analyses. Information contained in biological databases includes gene function, structure, localization, clinical effects of mutations as well as similarities of biological sequences and structures. This article presents information on some popular bioinformatic databases available online, including sequence, phylogenetic, structure and pathway, and microarray databases.