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Biotechnology

As a cross discipline, biotechnology relates to such different fields as, for example,

  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Agriculture
  • Biosensors
  • Biofuels
  • Waste and Residual Waste Disposal

The wide range of applicability of biotechnological methods and technologies is reflected in more than 1200 scientific and technical journals worldwide. The number of patent publications which can be classified as "biotechnological" is steeply increasing.

A central competence of WissInfo is achieving optimum search results by selection of databases suitable for the particular search. Optimum in this context means finding the essential documents, excluding as many non-relevant hits as possible, and also evaluating the documents on request. Databases which are particularly important in the field of biotechnology are Medline, Embase, Biosis (literature), Chemical Abstracts, Biotechnology Abstracts (literature and patents), and the World Patents Index (patents).

The knowledge on known or patented nucleic acid and amino acid sequences is indispensable for many biotech enterprises. On the internet, there are freely accessible databases such as Genbank, where, among other things, gene or protein sequences described in patents can be found. The US-American NCBI and European EMBL resources additionally offer the possibility to search for similar sequences with the help of the BLAST algorithm.

However, our experience shows that for sequence searches to be as thorough as possible, these cannot be conducted without the use of additional commercial databases. In addition to the internet resources mentioned, we therefore use databases such as DGENE or Registry in order to obtain search results which are as reliable and complete as possible for our clients. With the help of these databases, we are able to search for exact sequences, sequence segments, or similar sequences. Of course, we can also search for short nucleic acid sequences like ESTs or SNPs.