The Bangalore-based Molecular Connections (MC) has appointed United Bioinformatica Inc (UBI) as distributor for its protein interaction database - Netpro as well as custom literature curation/annotation services in Canada.

Netpro, a completely hand-curated knowledgebase of protein interactions, contains more than 34,000 expert curated and annotated protein interactions from published biomedical literature. Molecular Connections issues updates to the database, on a regular basis. Apart from covering the bulk of protein-protein interactions, Netpro contains other critical information like protein-small molecule, protein-RNA/DNA interactions etc.

A company statement said that all the interactions have been validated through expert curation by Molecular Connections' in-house scientific team. All molecules in NetPro are linked to public Ids (like LocusLink), facilitating ready integration of interactions information into proprietary databases. The protein-protein interactions in NetPro are complemented with granular annotations of the profiled proteins with scientific literature information on a variety of important subjects, including Biological Pathways/sub-pathways, Species, Experimental Technique, Diseases implicated, etc.

Jignesh Bhate, director of Molecular Connections, said, "NetPro is increasingly becoming a critical input for various academic and commercial labs around the world researching protein networks, pathways, systems biology etc. Our robust and proprietary curation methodology brings out the hidden knowledge from literature and presents this to researchers in a well-structured, easy to use fashion."

Lindsay Moir, president of UBI, indicated, "The high quality data in Netpro is assured by 100 per cent hand-curation and the validation methodology followed by Molecular Connections. This is a key differentiator which enhances the utility of Netpro to the user when compared to the other protein interaction databases which are available in market."

In addition to Netpro, UBI will also help Molecular Connections make available its high-quality, scalable, quick-turnaround, yet cost-effective, custom literature curation and annotation services to potential users.

Established in 2001, UBI is the only company in Canada that specializes in distributing bioinformatics software. UBI provides software for Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), data mining, microarray expression analysis, primer design, proteomics (1D and 2D gel image analysis), and sequence analysis.

Molecular Connections is a Joint Venture between Idea2solutions Private Limited, an incubator promoted by the founders of the Dr Reddy's group) and Institute of Infocomm Research, Singapore, a national research institute for advanced technologies.