September 1, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 15)
URL:
http://www.repairgenes.org
Rating:
Strong Points: Organizations
Weak Points: Needs educational content
Summary:
With an aim “to be a source of information about DNA repair genes and a useful resource for research on DNA repair,” RepairGenes approaches its subject modestly. A quick scan through the site reveals a VERY intelligent beginning that needn’t be hidden behind modesty. Information is organized by organism (alphabetically or in a phylogenetic tree), by processes (for example, base excision repair), or via an extensive set of hyper-crosslinks between the thousands of pieces of information. One could, as an example, click on an organism name (say, Dictyostelium discoideum), then click on a protein ID number (next to the gene description) and pull up information on the gene of interest as contained in several databases. This is the way things are supposed to work, and RepairGenes does a great job. My only complaint about the site is its lack of educational content for newbies. Hopefully this will be added soon.
