Star Picks
This month we wanted to pick a particular one of those "molecule club" type sites, but it turns out there are quite a few around and they are all excellent. So, we've provided a brief review of each one and they will all receive the fabled Star Pick award.
Paul May's molecule of the Month from Bristol University is one of the more famous of these sites and provides a diverse range of compounds of interest from toxins to pharmaceuticals and nucleic acids to pigments. Much use is made of MDL's chime to display molecules in manipulable 3D form.
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Imperial College's site is a kind of twin sibling to the Bristol one and was started by May and IC theoretical chemist and webmaestro Henry Rzepa.
Oxford University's Karl Harrison has also put together an award-winning MotM site, which covers species such as minerals as well as small molecules and macromolecules and plenty of "topical" molecules such as Viagra and Lindane.
This site is not so much a MotM site but demonstrates how VRML and Java versions of molecules, which offer some advantages over Chime molecules, can be used. The site looks neat and modern and its own MotM page has been linked to by the other sites. The site can show other MotM authors the possibilities for a hyperactive representation of their molecules. It also includes links to the services which can be used by the authors for creating their own advanced VRML scenes of their molecules.
The MedChem Feature Molecule at Virginia Commonwealth University is more focused on pharmaceuticals, hence the name. While the Prous site is good looking and provides a news source for pharmaceutical industry professionals as well as a featured molecule.
An important feature that visitors to this month's Star Picks might like to note is that you should now be able to find every chemical species mentioned in ACD/Dictionary.
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