Review of Biological Biochemical Image Database
Title: BBID-Biological Biochemical Image Database
URL: http://bbid.grc.nia.nih.gov/
Date Reviewed: May 20,2002
Description: The Biological Biochemical Image Database is a repository of
images of putative biological pathways,
macromolecular structures, gene families, and cellular relationships. These images
are taken directly from research or review papers. It is a quick way of
gaining insight into pathways without knowing much about them before hand. It
is hosted by the National Institute of Aging, one of the branches of the NIH.
Strengths:
Simple
concept and yet it has great utilitarian potential for getting a quick overview
of pathways and relationships. The proverb “One picture is worth more than a
thousand words” holds true here, because an image is a much more
efficacious way of learning about the role of a molecule in complex pathways
and to understand where it fits in the ‘big picture’.
The
images are direct uploads from journals, wherein the reference comes in handy
for additional reading on the subject.
Searches
based on gene names, pathways, cell or tissue type, disease names and organelle
level
List of all genes (710 total)
in this database
List of all keywords (129
total) in the BBID data base
Well
organized website (nice site map)
Weaknesses:
Limited
size of the database.
The
images roughly range from 1998-2001.
The site does not make its
own maps and diagrams.
Comprehensiveness: Not very comprehensive
Timeliness: Moderate. The lists of genes and keywords were last updated on
2-23-2000,however a search for ‘calmodulin’ brought up an image from October
2001.
Ease of Use: User friendly and facile website to decipher complex pathways.
Responsiveness: Quick
Kyoto
Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes page
http://www.genome.ad.jp/kegg/regulation.html
http://www.genome.ad.jp/kegg/metabolism.html
Boehringer Mannheim
Pathways Chart ( part of Expasy)
STKE-Signal Transduction
Knowledge Environment (Part of science online)
Dicussion
of Complex Biological Pathways
Kohn Molecular
Interaction Maps
Overall Evaluation: *** 3 stars (This site
loses out on its rating mainly due to the limited size of its database)
Reviewer: Shveta Taparia
Email:shveta.taparia@tufts.edu