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Biological Sciences: Internet Resources

This guide provides a starting point for research or study in this subject.

Internet Resources

Biodiversity hotspots A website created as a vehicle for distributing data on critically threatened ecosystems i.e. hotspots, particularly trends in biodiversity and threats, to a wider audience. It categorizes and prioritizes areas on all continents where biodiversity is at greatest risk and provides information about them for the purposes of planning and decision-making.
 
BioTech life science dictionary An online life science dictionary developed at the Indiana Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology at Indiana University. The dictionary defines terms dealing with biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, cell biology, and genetics. Provides a search engine and search hints.
 
Botanical Society of America online image collection A collection of educational images for instructional use. There are various sub-collection of images such as Plant Morphology, Plant Defense Mechanisms, Plant Anatomy, and Cellular Communication Channels.
 
Earthtrends: the environmental information portal An environmental information portal for researching global topics such as water resources, climate and atmosphere, population and health, energy resources, or agriculture and food. Information from the searchable database includes data tables, country profiles, or maps with global, regional, and country-level environmental information. One-time, free registration required to access some data.
 
FishBase FishBase is an information system with key data on the biology of all important fishes; an electronic encyclopedia which covers over 50% of all extant fish species.
 
Food and Nutrition Information Center Includes information about publications and databases of the FNIC on general nutrition, nutrition education, food service, and other items. Provides details about the USDA/Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Foodborne Illness Education Information Center and the Healthy School Meals Resource System.
 
Hong Kong Herbarium The Hong Kong Plant Database provides information and images about the plants of Hong Kong (including the native and exotic species that have been recorded in Hong Kong). A searchable database includes colour photographs and species information.
 
Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Offers access to nomenclature, specimens, literature, and fungus-host distributions databases from the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). Includes the Saccardo Index and the Index of Fungi.

Research Relevant Links

Google Scholar

Google Scholar Search

Data repositories

Life Science Data Repositories: (See also here for more data repositories)

Data Repository

Data Content

Dryad

evolutionary biology, ecology

Ensembl

genome data

GenBank (NCBI)

nucleotide sequences

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO, NCBI)

microarray and high throughput gene expression data

​IGSR: The International Genome Sample Resource

 public catalogue of human variation and genotype data

Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG)

metabolic pathways, genomes, genes, disease and drug information

National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)

repository of numerous life science data collections

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)

ecological studies

Protein Data Bank (PDB)

3D structure data for macromolecules (proteins and nucleic acids)

PubChem (NCBI)

bioactivity data, medical and toxicological information for small molecules