SNPpets of Life

It is estimated that 90% of the phenotypic variation in human beings arises from single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). While the change of a single nucleotide at one locus is insignificant in the large shadow of a genome, the enormous scope of SNPs is best appreciated by considering their abundance: about 1 for every 300 base pairs. In the 3 billion base pairs of human DNA, that translates to 10,000,000 points of variation. Permuting these alterations via sexual reproduction creates an almost incalculable number of genotypes; this, of course, is the reason why no two of us are the exact same, save for identical twins. Keeping researchers on top of this topic is the Wikipedia-inspired SNPedia, where massively hyperlinked datasets connect users to desired information with a minimum number of clicks.

[www.snpedia.com]

Crème de la Chem

Take the information in an excellent chemistry web site, multiply it by 250, and you have a pretty impressive dataset. Try to get on top of this information scattered across all corners of the Web and you'll feel like a cat herder. Search engines can assist with retrieval, but the signal-to-noise ratio they provide is often disappointingly low. Fortunately for chemistry researchers of all persuasions, organic chemist Andrey Frolov, Ph.D. has assembled, searched, and organized the contents of over 250 of the top sites in the field. The results are available in Chemistry Guide, a labor of love for him and one that many others will almost certainly appreciate.

[www.chemistryguide.org]

Non—habit-forming

Our brains can be too smart for their own good, learning quickly what they like and then seeking ways to prolong or recreate those feelings. The downside of such single-minded action, of course, is that it can lead to addiction, a phenomenon whose molecular roots are as fascinating as they are complicated. With the philosophy that knowledge is the first step in treatment, the Addiction Science Research and Education Center (ASREC) at the University of Texas offers educational outreach to interested parties and a plethora of online information to everyone who visits. Enlightening content areas include 300 facts about alcohol and a similar number about drugs. A sobering educational site with a few surprising twists, ASREC is poised to improve lives.

[www.utexas.edu/research/asrec]

Insecta Site

Insecta, with over 1 million known species (5000 dragonflies alone), is not just the largest class of organisms on Earth; it contains the most diverse set of species, too. You'll be convinced of the latter after scanning the impressive Insect Images site, where a team at the University of Georgia has assembled one of the most extensive insect graphic collections to be found. Don't be surprised if, while exploring, you feel like a tiny boat on an ocean of pictures: you are outnumbered over 40,000 to 1. With its bounty of graphic splendor celebrating the most abundant life forms on Earth, Insect Images deserves to win the hearts of visual learners everywhere.

[www.insectimages.org]

Moving Performances

Self-described as “a biologist by education and an artist by disposition,” John Kyrk has combined his knowledge and interests into an informative, educational oeuvre dedicated to animations of biological processes at the cellular and molecular levels. As he notes in a description of the site, animations act as “invisible helpers” that register in the brain automatically, requiring little effort to remember them. John's online offerings, spanning topics from DNA replication and translation to photosynthesis and meiosis, will ease the implanting of complicated processes in the minds of its users.

[www.johnkyrk.com]

Kinases Without Borders

In any listing of the most important enzymes for controlling cellular behavior, kinases must certainly be considered. You'll get no arguments on the matter at Kinase.com, hosted at the Salk Institute, where the evolution and function of what has been dubbed the “kinome”—the complete collection of kinases in a genome—is the feature attraction. Information is not restricted to a single organism, though, with kinomics coverage spanning much of eukaryotic biology including humans, mice, sea urchins, Drosophila, Dictyostelium, Tetrahymena, and others. There is even a section covering kinases discovered by the genomic analysis of prokaryotes. If data is your thing, then you'll probably want to access the downloadable sequences of (gulp!) over 45,000 kinases.

[www.kinase.com]