title: MetaBase--the wiki-database of biological databases.
abstract: Biology is generating more data than ever. As a result, there is an ever increasing number of publicly available databases that analyse, integrate and summarize the available data, providing an invaluable resource for the biological community. As this trend continues, there is a pressing need to organize, catalogue and rate these resources, so that the information they contain can be most effectively exploited. MetaBase (MB) (http://MetaDatabase.Org) is a community-curated database containing more than 2000 commonly used biological databases. Each entry is structured using templates and can carry various user comments and annotations. Entries can be searched, listed, browsed or queried. The database was created using the same MediaWiki technology that powers Wikipedia, allowing users to contribute on many different levels. The initial release of MB was derived from the content of the 2007 Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) Database Issue. Since then, approximately 100 databases have been manually collected from the literature, and users have added information for over 240 databases. MB is synchronized annually with the static Molecular Biology Database Collection provided by NAR. To date, there have been 19 significant contributors to the project; each one is listed as an author here to highlight the community aspect of the project.
authors.affiliation: Personal Genomics Institute, Genome Research Foundation, Suwon 443-270, South Korea. dan.bolser@gmail.com
authors.forename: Dan M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bolser
authors.forename: Pierre-Yves
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Chibon
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Palopoli
authors.forename: Sungsam
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jacob
authors.forename: Victoria Dominguez
authors.initials: VD
authors.lastname: Del Angel
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Swan
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bassi
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: González
authors.forename: Prashanth
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Suravajhala
authors.forename: Seungwoo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Romano
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.forename: Bryan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bishop
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Eargle
authors.forename: Timur
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shtatland
authors.forename: Nicholas J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Provart
authors.forename: Dave
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Clements
authors.forename: Daniel P
authors.initials: DP
authors.lastname: Renfro
authors.forename: Daeui
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bhak
authors.forename: Jong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bhak
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020407:Internet; D018511:Systems Integration