A Novel Concept for the Search and Retrieval of the Derwent Markush Resource Database.

The representation of and search for generic chemical structures (Markush) remains a continuing challenge. Several research groups have addressed this problem, and over time a limited number of practical solutions have been proposed. Today there are two large commercial providers of Markush databases: Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and Thomson Reuters. The Thomson Reuters "Derwent" Markush database is currently offered via the online services Questel and STN and as a data feed for in-house use. The aim of this paper is to briefly review the existing Markush systems (databases plus search engines) and to describe our new approach for the implementation of the Derwent Markush Resource on STN. Our new approach demonstrates the integration of the Derwent Markush Resource database into the existing chemistry-focused STN platform without loss of detail. This provides compatibility with other structure and Markush databases on STN and at the same time makes it possible to deploy the specific features and functions of the Derwent approach. It is shown that the different Markush languages developed by CAS and Derwent can be combined into a single general Markush description. In this concept the generic nodes are grouped together in a unique hierarchy where all chemical elements and fragments can be integrated. As a consequence, both systems are searchable using a single structure query. Moreover, the presented concept could serve as a promising starting point for a common generalized description of Markush structures.

Algorithm for reaction classification.

Reaction classification has important applications, and many approaches to classification have been applied. Our own algorithm tests all maximum common substructures (MCS) between all reactant and product molecules in order to find an atom mapping containing the minimum chemical distance (MCD). Recent publications have concluded that new MCS algorithms need to be compared with existing methods in a reproducible environment, preferably on a generalized test set, yet the number of test sets available is small, and they are not truly representative of the range of reactions that occur in real reaction databases. We have designed a challenging test set of reactions and are making it publicly available and usable with InfoChem's software or other classification algorithms. We supply a representative set of example reactions, grouped into different levels of difficulty, from a large number of reaction databases that chemists actually encounter in practice, in order to demonstrate the basic requirements for a mapping algorithm to detect the reaction centers in a consistent way. We invite the scientific community to contribute to the future extension and improvement of this data set, to achieve the goal of a common standard.

International chemical identifier for reactions (RInChI).

The Reaction InChI (RInChI) extends the idea of the InChI, which provides a unique descriptor of molecular structures, towards reactions. Prototype versions of the RInChI have been available since 2011. The first official release (RInChI-V1.00), funded by the InChI Trust, is now available for download ( http://www.inchi-trust.org/downloads/ ). This release defines the format and generates hashed representations (RInChIKeys) suitable for database and web operations. The RInChI provides a concise description of the key data in chemical processes, and facilitates the manipulation and analysis of reaction data.