title: An integrated web medicinal materials DNA database: MMDBD (Medicinal Materials DNA Barcode Database).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Thousands of plants and animals possess pharmacological properties and there is an increased interest in using these materials for therapy and health maintenance. Efficacies of the application is critically dependent on the use of genuine materials. For time to time, life-threatening poisoning is found because toxic adulterant or substitute is administered. DNA barcoding provides a definitive means of authentication and for conducting molecular systematics studies. Owing to the reduced cost in DNA authentication, the volume of the DNA barcodes produced for medicinal materials is on the rise and necessitates the development of an integrated DNA database.
  
  
  METHODS
  We have developed an integrated DNA barcode multimedia information platform- Medicinal Materials DNA Barcode Database (MMDBD) for data retrieval and similarity search. MMDBD contains over 1000 species of medicinal materials listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and American Herbal Pharmacopoeia. MMDBD also contains useful information of the medicinal material, including resources, adulterant information, medical parts, photographs, primers used for obtaining the barcodes and key references. MMDBD can be accessed at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/icm/mmdbd.htm.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This work provides a centralized medicinal materials DNA barcode database and bioinformatics tools for data storage, analysis and exchange for promoting the identification of medicinal materials. MMDBD has the largest collection of DNA barcodes of medicinal materials and is a useful resource for researchers in conservation, systematic study, forensic and herbal industry.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China.
authors.forename: Shao-Ke
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Lou
authors.forename: Ka-Lok
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Paul Pui-Hay
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: But
authors.forename: Stephen Kwok-Wing
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Tsui
authors.forename: Pang-Chui
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Shaw
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016172:DNA Fingerprinting; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D020407:Internet; D010600:Pharmacology; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface