Structures Searching

Hash codes of molecules which are already pre-computed are suitable for use in fiill structure searches in database applications. The compression of the code of a chemical structure into only one number also makes it possible to compute in advance the transformation results for a whole catalog. The files can be stored and kept complete in the core memory during execution of the program, so that a search can be accomplished within seconds. 

Then, in the early and mid-1 990s, CAS developed SciFinder and SciFinder Sc ho lar to address the needs of professional chemists and other scientists. SciFinder was developed to allow more intelligence in data access, such as smart structure searching, research topic exploration, advanced author searching, and powerful refine and analysi.s capabilities including categorize and panorama". 

Thus, if the user wants to look for literature including requested chemicals or reactions, it is possible to query the database by the first option Chemical Substance or Reaction , The compound can be entered as a query in three different ways drawing the chemical structure in a molecule editor (Chemical Structure) searching by names or identification number, such as the CAS Number (Structure Identifier) and searching by molecular formula (Figure 5-12). 

An alternative to retrieval by means of an atom list is a structure search performed by means of a user-defined generic group which contains only chlorine... 

As already mentioned (Section 5.3), the stored structure information in this type of database makes it possible to search for chemical structures in several ways. One method is to draw a structure (via a molecule editor) and to perform either a precise structure search (full structure search) or a search containing part of the input structure (substructure search) (see Sections 6.2-6.4). The databases also allow the searching of chemical names and molecular formulas (see Section 6.1). The search results are in most cases displayed in a graphical manner. 

Full structure search can be developed by using similar approaches to those employed in the case of 2D structure search. Thus, some topological indices can be modified in such a way that they include geometrical information. For example, the global index given by Eq. (4) can be modified to Eq. (11), where are real interatomic distances. 

Figure 10.3-20 shows that i-glutamate plays an important role in the metabolism with many reactions leading to this compound and many reactions starting from it. The first example gives a full structure search in order to show how easy it is to find all reactions that a certain compound participates in. 

To seat ch for available starting materials, similarity searches, substructure searches, and some classical retrieval methods such as full structure searches, name searches, empirical formula searches, etc., have been integrated into the system. All searches can be applied to a number of catalogs of available fine chemicals (c.g, Fluka 154]. In addition, compound libraries such as in-housc catalogs can easily be integrated. 

As already stated above, the database has been developed using ISIS software. The program operation is very simple, and about 30 min to learn the particular commands of this structure-searching program. ISIS provides both storage and retrieval of chemical structures. It is also possible to store text and numeric data into database entries. Because molecular structures are searchable in many ways, ISIS software is an excellent tool for exploiting data, and not simply archiving it. 

For the inexperienced or infrequent users it is even more of a problem. Inexperienced users should have the ability to exploit easily the wide variety of structural search techniques. 

To address these issues regarding adequate structural searching in CHIRBASE, some facilities have been recently added to the user interface. The result is the automatic generation and search of strategic 2D query structures defined with the help of the following commands (Fig. 4-5) ... 

From these initial results we have seen that this approach has exciting practical issues. However, we have also found that it does not match the accuracy of a database structure search, and the latter will certainly continue to be the best approach for CSP prediction for separation of a particular structure. 

Current chemical information systems offer three principal types of search facility. Structure search involves the search of a file of compounds for the presence or absence of a specified query compound, for example, to retrieve physicochemical data associated with a particular substance. Substructure search involves the search of a file of compounds for all molecules containing some specified query substructure of interest. Finally, similarity search involves the search of a file of compounds for those molecules that are most similar to an input query molecule, using some quantitative definition of structural similarity. 

Structure searching is the chemical equivalent of graph isomorphism, that is, the matching of one graph against another to determine whether they are identical. This can be carried out very rapidly if a unique structure representation is available, because a character-by-character match will then suffice to compare two structures for identity. However, connection tables are not necessarily unique, because very many different tables can be created for the same molecule depending upon the way in which the atoms in the molecule are numbered. Specifically, for a molecule containing N atoms, there are N ... 

Feldman A, Hodes, L. An efficient design for chemical structure searching. I. The screens. J Chem Inf Comput Sci 1975 15 147-52. 

Willett P, Winterman V, Bawden, D. Implementation of nearest neighbour searching in an online chemical structure search system. J Chem Inf Comput Sci 1986 26 36-41. 

ChemIDplus. Published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, ChemIDplus [62] is a web-based search system, http //chem.sis.nlm.nih.gov/ chemidplus/, that provides free access to structure and nomenclature authority files used for the identification of chemical substances cited in National Library of Medicine (NLM) databases. ChemIDplus also provides structure searching and direct links to biomedical resources at NLM and on the Internet. The database contains over 349,000 chemical records, over 56,000 of which include chemical structures, and is searchable by name, synonym, CAS registry number, molecular formula, classification code, locator code, and structure. 

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