BIAdb

BIAdb aggregates curated chemical, biological, and source-organism data on benzylisoquinoline alkaloids (BIAs) to support drug discovery and synthetic biology research.

Key Features:

• Extensive Data Compilation: Aggregates 2,504 records representing 846 unique benzylisoquinoline alkaloids from PubChem, KEGG, KNApSAcK and manual curation of scientific literature.
• Diverse Information Coverage: Contains source-organism annotations for 627 plant species and curated annotations for 114 distinct biological functions, and lists example compounds including papaverine, noscapine, codeine, morphine, apomorphine, berberine, protopine, and tubocurarine.
• Integration with Drugpedia: Integrated with Drugpedia to enable structured data management and interoperability with external knowledge bases.
• Online Tools Integration: Incorporates online computational tools for exploration and analysis of the stored BIA data.
• External Resource Links: Provides links to additional databases and external resources for cross-referencing and further investigation.

Scientific Applications:

• Drug discovery (natural products): Supports natural-product-focused drug discovery by providing curated chemical and functional annotations of BIAs.
• Synthetic biology and pathway engineering: Supplies compound and source-organism data relevant for biosynthetic pathway design and engineering of medicinal BIAs.
• Functional and therapeutic investigation: Enables analysis of biological functions and potential therapeutic applications of specific benzylisoquinoline alkaloids.

Methodology:

Data were aggregated from PubChem, KEGG and KNApSAcK and through manual curation of scientific literature, resulting in 2,504 records for 846 unique BIAs with annotations for 627 plant species and 114 functions; the database is integrated with Drugpedia and includes links to external resources and online analysis tools.