plprot

For far too long, the chloroplast has been keeping the spotlight squarely on himself. Everybody knows what a chloroplast is, but many fail to realize that the chloroplast is just one type of the organelles known as plastids. Plprot, the plastid protein database, features three types of plastids in addition to the chloroplast: the proplastid (the precursor to all other plastids), the etioplast (basically a chloroplast, but one that has not been exposed to light), and the chromoplast (used for the synthesis and storage of pigment). Plprot features an introduction to each of these plastids, in addition to the database. The database stores information on about 2,650 entries for proteins identified in proteomics studies, and it can be searched according to plprot identifier, gene identifier, author of the paper in which the protein was reported, NCBI protein annotation, or protein sequence.

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C.elegans Movies

Here’s a website that took a page from Hollywood when it comes to advertising its movies. Rather than touting “Academy Award winner So-and-So,” it boasts the “Nobel Prize-winning worm C. elegans.” The entire site is, in fact, dedicated to this small scientific celebrity, showcasing the little critter in a number of time-lapse videos. These videos have been made by members of the worldwide C. elegans research community, and they are organized into the categories of embryos, RNAi screens, larvae and adults, techniques, and 4-D movies. My only complaint about the site is that many of the videos direct you to the original online journal source, at which point you must sift through supplementary figures or unlabeled videos to find the one you want. Overall, though, this is a nice website for C. elegans researchers, as well as anyone who finds him/herself simply star-struck by this award-winning worm.

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Inside Cancer

For as much as cancer has (sadly) become part of our existence, there are many people who do not understand just what it is. Enter Inside Cancer, a wonderful website for anybody who wants to learn about the basics of cancer, as well as a fantastic website for educators. Inside Cancer is a nicely designed multimedia website that is divided into four sections: hallmarks of cancer, causes and prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and pathways to cancer. These, in turn, are composed of instructional animations and commentaries covering various subtopics. Yet, the best feature of the site for science educators is the (aptly named) Teacher Center, which provides tools for teachers to browse the content of the site and create their own presentations, build and share lesson plans, and align content to local and national education standards. An informative site, Inside Cancer is a must-visit site for anyone and everyone looking to get to “know thy enemy.”

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PROWL

Do you find yourself on the PROWL for online protein analysis tools? (Hey, I have to take the easy puns where I can get them…) If so, then you need to scurry over to the website of the Chait laboratory at The Rockefeller University. This laboratory, dedicated to the development of “proteomic tools for dissecting cellular function, with a special emphasis on the mass spectrometry (MS) of peptides and proteins,” has compiled seven of its tools on the page entitled “PROWL.” These various tools allow users to do such things as predict peptide maps from protein sequence collections, analyze mass spectrometric fragmentations, find modifications on polypeptide sequences, and identify proteins that match tandem mass spectra. All of the tools are online, so they do not require downloading. There aren’t any tutorials, but the tools are all fairly straightforward, and in some instances, examples are provided.

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