Planta Med 2008; 74 - SL14
DOI: 10.1055/s-0028-1083894

Andhira: from biodiversity to chemo diversity – the database of Sardinian endemic plants and their molecules

M Floris 1, G Frau 1, J Masciocchi 1, G Mocci 1, 2, P Palla 1, V Uras 1, P Rodriguez-Tomé 1
  • 1CRS4 Bioinformatics Lab., Parco Sardegna Ricerche, 09010 Pula (CA), Italy
  • 2Dipart. Scienze Botaniche, University of Cagliari, Viale S. Ignazio 13, 09123 Cagliari, Italy

Andhira is a database of botanical, phytochemical, and pharmaceutical properties of Sardinian endemic flora and their metabolites. Sardinia is an Italian island located in the Mediterranean sea. Its long-term geographic isolation has caused a strong genetic isolation in the regional flora [1], which has resulted in the development of a number of chemotypes unique to this island. The latest studies consider that there are about 230 endemic plants, representing about 10% of the local flora [2]. Andhira collects and manages the information about plants, making available electronically and at a central location the plants' botanical, including ecological, environmental, phytochemical, and pharmaceutical data, much of which has been extracted from paper literature as part of the development of this project. Andhira provides information on all the molecules occurring in each plant, their compounds, and their properties. It organizes this information in a way to allow them to be used with virtual screening platforms, creating opportunities for drug discovery research within the unique chemical space of the Sardinian flora. Currently, all molecules of Andhira are being compared with the molecules in MMSInc [3], a free web-oriented database of commercially available compounds built for virtual screening and chemoinformatic applications. MMSInc is integrated with PubChem [4] and PDB [5] databases facilitating the cross exchange of ligand information. Results of this screening are entered into Andhira and will be available to the public. Web access to Andhira is available at http://www.andhira.org/

Acknowledgements: This work has been funded by Sardegna Ricerche (2007–2008)

References: 1. Thomson, J. (2005) Plant evolution in the Mediterranean, Oxford University Press, UK.

2. Pignatti, S. (2002), Flora d'Italia, Ed Agricole, Bologna, Italy.

3. Fanton, M. et al. (2008) Proceedings of BIOTECHNO2008, IEEE Computer Society ed.

4. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

5. Berman, H.M. et al. (2000) Nucleic Acids Res. 28:235–242.