title: Pybel: a Python wrapper for the OpenBabel cheminformatics toolkit.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Scripting languages such as Python are ideally suited to common programming tasks in cheminformatics such as data analysis and parsing information from files. However, for reasons of efficiency, cheminformatics toolkits such as the OpenBabel toolkit are often implemented in compiled languages such as C++. We describe Pybel, a Python module that provides access to the OpenBabel toolkit.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Pybel wraps the direct toolkit bindings to simplify common tasks such as reading and writing molecular files and calculating fingerprints. Extensive use is made of Python iterators to simplify loops such as that over all the molecules in a file. A Pybel Molecule can be easily interconverted to an OpenBabel OBMol to access those methods or attributes not wrapped by Pybel.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Pybel allows cheminformaticians to rapidly develop Python scripts that manipulate chemical information. It is open source, available cross-platform, and offers the power of the OpenBabel toolkit to Python programmers.
authors.affiliation: Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. baoilleach@gmail.com
authors.forename: Noel M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: O'Boyle
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Morley
authors.forename: Geoffrey R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Hutchison