Sigma-Aldrich Partners With Sunset Molecular Discovery to Expand Your Favorite Gene Search Tool

Sigma-Aldrich today announced the addition of 1,300 bioactive small molecules to its gene-based search tool, Your Favorite Gene. The tool provides expanded data on the functional relationship between bioactive small molecules and genes and enables researchers to quickly and easily identify Sigma-Aldrich products associated with their genes of interest. The mapping of Sigma-Aldrich bioactive small molecules to functionally related genes is a joint effort between Sigma-Aldrich and Sunset Molecular Discovery LLC (SMDL), the host of chemistry-biology interaction databases WOMBAT and WOMBAT-PK.

"These new annotations include more than 3,900 total interactions between bioactive small molecules and their cognate proteins and help make our Your Favorite Gene search tool an even more valuable resource for the life science community," said David Smoller, President of Sigma-Aldrich's Research Biotech business unit. "Sigma-Aldrich is changing the way researchers gain access to the tools they need by connecting biological knowledge to our life science products."

This expansion of Your Favorite Gene's content represents Sigma-Aldrich's latest effort to provide its biotech products to life science researchers through innovative online portals. It follows the release of more than 56,000 structures to PubChem in July 2007.

"We're excited to be mapping Sigma-Aldrich's chemicals to the target and bioactivity data indexed in WOMBAT and WOMBAT-PK," said Dr. Tudor Oprea, CEO of Sunset Molecular Discovery LLC. "As an informatics knowledge company specialized in mapping the chemistry-biology space, Sunset Molecular Discovery products offer highly curated data from world-class scientists to mainstream research users in the drug discovery industry."