Discussion

Hi, Nwume,

First of all, you really need to have a specific question that you want to answer, and then need to find a way to how to answer that question.  When you don’t have a good question to answer, you just can’t answer it.  So, please write down your question that ends with a question mark, and then list a set of tasks that you need to do to answer that question.  If you can’t identify a specific task(s) for finding the answer, it is likely to mean that your question is too broad, so need to write a new question (or questions) that is narrower than the original one.  Repeat this until you see what you really want to ask and how you find the answer to it.

By the way, to find psychoactive drugs from PubChem, probably the best approach is to user the PubChem classification browser (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification).

 

(1) Go to the classification browser, select “MeSH” from the “Select classification” drop-down menu (on the top-left) and “Compound” for the “Data type counts to display” option.

(2) Type “antipsychotic agents” in the text box and run a search by hitting the search button.   This returns ~9 MeSH terms with which any PubChem Compounds are annotated.

(3) Click the record count for one of the hits to explore (for example, “Antipsychotic Agents”).  This gives you a list of 207 compounds annotated with the MeSH term “antipsychotic agents”.

(4a) Refine the resulting compound list using various filters available under “Refine your results” on the right column.  You can retrieve the compounds with protein-bound experimental 3-D structures by clicking “Protein 3D Structure”, or retrieve the compounds with bioactivity data by clicking “BioAssays, Tested”.

(4b) Alternatively, you can click the “Structure Clustering” button under the “Actions on your results” section (on the top-right).

(4c) Another thing that you can try is to retrieve records in other databases associated with the antipsychotic drugs, using the dropdown menus in the “Find related data” section (on the right column).  For example, by selecting “BioSystems” from the dropdown menu, you will get a list of pathways associated with the psychotic drugs.

 

Well, there are many other things you can do with PubChem as well as Reaxys, but you can get the most out of these resources, only if you have a clear question that you want to answer.  I think you need to come up with some good idea about it.

 

Hello Nwume! The topic "drugs for controlling psychotic disorders" is very broad. To do justice to this project, where you really look at how PubChem and Reaxys might complement each other in answering an information research question, it would make sense to narrow down your topic; that is, to define a specific question you want to answer about these drugs. Are you interested in a particular drug? Are you interested in the properties of these drugs? There are a lot of mental disorders; which specific one would you like to tackle? Dr. Kim and Damon gave some very sound advice in the comments above about how to narrow down your research topic, which will make it easier to define what kind of search you need to perform. Take a look at what they wrote above and please get back to us with the question you want to address in your search. Then, the three of us can help guide you through the searches that can be performed in PubChem and Reaxys. Looking forward to working with you! Anja

Amita How are you going finding information on the use of nanomaterials to clean up wastewater? As I suggested in my earlier note it probably is best to search for three of the concepts: "nano", wastewater, wood/cellulose, so one of the starting points could be simply to search in Search Reaxys (the text option from the landing page): nanomaterials wood wastewater. When you do this you get 6 Documents and you can browse through them. However, the question is: "How did Reaxys perform the search?" Well, a couple of weeks ago (yes, Reaxys is constantly adding functions and features) Reaxys added the Edit Query feature which shows you exactly what was searched. To see this feature, from the list of choices you get after you do the search above, hover with the mouse over Preview Results for the 6 Documents and a link: Edit Query will appear. Click it. It tells you the search was done in the Document Basic Index (which contains single terms from all the 54+ million Document Records) and you will note that a number of synonyms for 'nanomaterials' were searched automatically (the semi-colon ; between the terms shows that the terms were ORed together), but only a few terms were searched automatically for 'wood' and 'wastewater'. The good thing is that you can easily modify the search so let's now think about it. In the top line, if you click the down arrow on the left you find some options, so why don't you chose 'starts with'. What then happens is that Reaxys automatically applies "right-hand truncation' for the term you now enter. On that line then delete all the suggested terms and simply enter: nano. What Reaxys then will do is search for all terms starting with the letters NANO. Next think about the next line (the one with wood). We need to allow for wood, woodchip (and various other 'woody things'). We also need to consider synonyms relating to 'cellulose'. Are you with me? If you are then adjust the down arrow to 'contains' and enter: wood; cellulose. 'Contains' applies left- AND right-truncation, so with ; meaning OR what we are asking for is any term in the Document Basic Index that has the letters WOOD or the letters CELLULOSE. That should reasonably cover the woody concept. Finally, change the last line to 'contains' and enter: waste which will pick up wastewater, waste water ... or any term that contains WASTE somewhere. Note that Reaxys will AND these together. That is, we are searching all concepts in the one go. At the top, click Search (Documents) and have a look at what you get (well over one thousand document records, right). That is, click Abstract, Index Terms, play around with some of the Filters and Analysis tools (although remember that Index Terms under Filters and Analysis only looks at Reaxys terms; for Emtree or Compendex terms we have to do something else, which I can help you with if you are interested). I think that's enough clues at the moment. Have a go and let me know what you think. I shall send you some contact information to get to me through your contact Information. In summary, all we did was try a few of the terms in Search Reaxys. We looked at Edit Query and learnt how Reaxys searched. We then used this information to guide us what to do next - in other words with Reaxys' initial help we 'took control of the search'. We thought like scientists (not like dummy Googlers) and we came up with a really good answer set which we could look at further. Have fun! Damon

Hy Dr kim, i am working on drugs for controlling psychotic disorder please if there is any idea you can give me on how to use reaxys and pubchem to do my project thanks from NWUME .