Goals:

• Provide a free and open information resource focused on DNA polymerases
• Extract primary results from published and unpublished sources
• Present results in context, without editorial bias, verified by authors
• Create a polymerase-centric information hub by connecting with other protein resources (PubMed, PDB, UniProt, etc.)
• Be responsive to community suggestions
• Remain current by automatically identifying newly published papers
• Sustainability! By engaging the polymerase research community we can produce a valuable resource with minimal effort from any individual contributor

Background:

The DNA Polymerase Database (Polbase) is intended to compile the wealth of existing DNA Polymerase information from public and private records into an open, searchable database. It supplements existing resources:

See the Polbase FAQs for more information.

Polbase is a free and open resource, its contents may be included (with attribution) in other software. Almost all resources are available in both human-readable HTML renderings as well as XML and JSON encodings for consumption by other software. To request a document in another format, simply append “.xml” or ".json" to the URL (e.g. for all polymerases, /polymerases.xml).

To report problems with Polbase or request new features, please contact us or submit your issue directly at polbase-help.

Polbase is a project of New England Biolabs with contributions from our founding collaborators: Linda Reha-Krantz, Bill Jack, Cathy Joyce, Stu Linn, Stefan Sarafianos, Sam Wilson, and Roger Woodgate

Polbase is funded by NIH SBIR Grant #1R44GM087021

This project was inspired by REBASE, an open collection of information about restriction enzymes and related proteins.

Polbase was built by Brad Langhorst and Nicole Nichols using the following technologies and other tools too numerous to list here:

• Ruby and Rails
• Apache HTTP server and Phusion Passenger
• jQuery and DataTables for interactivity.