October 15, 2006 (Vol. 26, No. 18)

URL:
http://www.exactantigen.com

Rating:
Strong Points: Vast information collection
Weak Points: Appears designed for people in the know

Summary:
It’s hard to find a website with a more spartan opening page than ExactAntigen. It contains a title, a search box, and three links—Browse, About, and Antibody Review. I rolled the dice and entered the term ‘insulin’ in the search engine. What I came up with was a collection of hits that were very mixed. Hits contained insulin gene info from several species, as well as zillions of genes that have the word ‘insulin’ in their description. Curiously, I also turned up genes that seemed to have no words related to insulin at all. I’m not sure what to make of them. Clicking on the Browse link led to categories (ELISA and others) followed by hyperlinked letters. I could browse such higgledy piggledy information by gene name, species, gene ontology, disease, and chemicals. A click on the About link revealed that the site contained a curated database of 22,000 Mab products, so it undoubtedly is of use to researchers. However, is it too much to ask for a better organizational scheme and few descriptions?

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