Abstract
In a metabolomics research, assignment of measured spectra to a specific metabolite is one of the most fundamental process. The assignment is usually made by taking a match with known compounds and therefore, it is necessary to scan the spectra against whole previously studied compounds. This means the survey of whole natural products reported in the literatures which is an extremely tedious and daunting process. In order to make this process feasible, we have developed a metabolite database that contains species-metabolite relations called KNApSAcK, which currently contains 102,005 species-metabolite relations involving 50,054 metabolites. In the present study, we review the current status of KNApSAcK database and its application to metabolomics and introduce the multifaceted retrieval system, KNApSAcK Family, which consists of seven parts for the purpose of retrieving metabolites from several different aspects. "Pocket" includes search system for species related to human living such as edible plant in Japan ("Lunch Box") , traditional Japanese medicine ("KAMPO"). "KNApSAcK from around the world" includes medicinal and edible plants utilized in each country.
