The Letters from Terra Metabolite Database

Welcome to the Letters from Terra metabolite database, the first major biochemical project to be listed on the Letters from Terra site. The main compulsion for the creation of this site was the desire to create something that was actually of some use in asp; there are few things more frustrating than being enthused by a new tool or skill after its difficult acquisition before realising you have little application for it. Fortunately, I was spared this in asp, and one of the first projects that sprung to mind was a living, breathing encyclopedia cataloguing my passion for metabolism. The database will eventually contain every metabolite involved in the metabolism of carbohydrates, fatty acids and cholesterol, amino acids, nucleotides and any other areas I can find information on, and will attempt to span the biosphere, although with an emphasis on mamillian metabolism where several varients are available. Each metabolite can be viewed along with its direct precursors and products a (rather too) detailed summary of its biochemistry and function, and statistics such as equivalent in ATP and biosynthetic materials, or cofactors involved in metabolism. All of these factors can be searched using my own search utility, or you can just browse the database at your own leisure, following metabolic pathways at your disgression. I hope this guide may be of some use to students or fans of biochemistry, and that the information contained within is correct. Most of the source of the database comes from the fantastic textbook Biochemistry by Voet & Voet, but there's also material from Metalloproteins (Portland press 1999) and numerous websites; however, in each case these only provided the basics of mechanism, and many of the wider extrapolations and discussion on each compound is entirely my own. Because of this, do not be overly surprised if there are more than spelling errors in each description. If you take issue with anything I've written, email me and I'll either make the corrections or defend my position. The easiest way to access the database is to click on "New search" above, which will take you to the combined search page. Here you can either browse metabolites by their simple name, or conduct more specialised searched on all manner of criteria. When you view a metabolite, you can then jump to its immediate precursors or products by clicking on the links on the detail page. For guidelines on searching, click on "search help" above. If you're at a loss of where to start, click on "info" above to see an overview of the pathways covered, with links to get you into the database. To save a page at any point, simply click on "bookmark page". All the metabolite images used in this website were drawn using MDL's fantastic (and free) ISIS draw, which can be found at their website. Enjoy the database, and I hope you find it interesting and maybe even useful.

Many thanks, Jon

February 28th, 2004