Commentary

Chemistry in Bioinformatics

Peter Murray-Rust^{* 1} , John BO Mitchell^{* 1} and Henry S Rzepa^{* 2}

¹Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge. CB2 1EW, UK.

²Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AY, UK.

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

BMC Bioinformatics 2005, 6:141doi:10.1186/1471-2105-6-141

Published:	7 June 2005

Abstract

Chemical information is now seen as critical for most areas of life sciences. But unlike Bioinformatics, where data is openly available and freely re-usable, most chemical information is closed and cannot be re-distributed without permission. This has led to a failure to adopt modern informatics and software techniques and therefore paucity of chemistry in bioinformatics. New technology, however, offers the hope of making chemical data (compounds and properties) free during the authoring process. We argue that the technology is already available; we require a collective agreement to enhance publication protocols.