Abstract
“LIPIDBANK for Web” is a database system offering information on lipids over the Internet (http//lipidbank.jp/). This database is developed by the members of the Japanese Conference of the Biochemistry of Lipids, and the first lipid database open to the world from Japan. The database is composed of three parts : 1) The factual data including name of the lipid, chemical and physical properties, information of biological activities, genetic information, etc., 2) The graphic data including chemical structure, chromatogram, IR or NMR spectra and other graphic data, and 3) The related reference data. This article describes the brief history of the “LIPIDBANK for Web” and how to use the database and its' future scope. In near future, the database will be linked to the other databases, such as, biological active lipid database, genomic-database, metabolome database, sugar-database, enzyme-database. etc. And it will contribute to the future development of bioinformatics.
