Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on October 17, 2008
Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(Database issue):D291-D294; doi:10.1093/nar/gkn695
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, Database issue D291-D294
© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article appears in the following Nucleic Acids Research issue: Database issue [View the issue table of contents]
Articles |
SuperScent—a database of flavors and scents
1Structural Bioinformatics Group, Institute of Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Charité – University Medicine Berlin, Arnimallee 22, 14195 Berlin, 2Department of Cardiology and Angiology, Charité – University Medicine Berlin, Schumannstr. 20/21, 10117 Berlin, 3Institute of Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, University of Rostock, 18059 Rostock, Germany 4Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, SE 413 19 Göteborg and 5Department of Ecology, Lund University, SE 223 62 Lund, Sweden
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +49 30 8445 1649; Fax: +49 30 8445 1551; Email: robert.preissner{at}charite.de
Received August 15, 2008. Revised September 24, 2008. Accepted September 25, 2008.
Volatiles are efficient mediators of chemical communication acting universally as attractant, repellent or warning signal in all kingdoms of life. Beside this broad impact volatiles have in nature, scents are also widely used in pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries, so the identification of new scents is of great industrial interest. Despite this importance as well as the vast number and diversity of volatile compounds, there is currently no comprehensive public database providing information on structure and chemical classification of volatiles. Therefore, the database SuperScent was established to supply users with detailed information on the variety of odor components. The version of the database presented here comprises the 2D/3D structures of approximately 2100 volatiles and around 9200 synonyms as well as physicochemical properties, commercial availability and references. The volatiles are classified according to their origin, functionality and odorant groups. The information was extracted from the literature and web resources. SuperScent offers several search options, e.g. name, Pubchem ID number, species, functional groups, or molecular weight. SuperScent is available online at: http://bioinformatics.charite.de/superscent.