Abstract:

Informatics in Chemistry is concerned with the application of computation's methods to solve chemical problems. The manipulation of chemical structural information is very important to this aim. Concomitant increases in computer power, have provided the resource to deal with complex tasks, for the designs of new synthetic routes of bioactive compounds, by searching databases of known reactions, through the construction of theoretical models to relate the biological activity to the chemical structure.

Many organizations maintain databases of chemical compounds. Some of these databases are publicly accessible; others are proprietary. They hold millions of entries. Recent development involves the creation of databases that can return results in seconds. There are many sources of chemical information. These extremely complex databases with chemical information are now available to the students at the University in a very simple way.

During our courses at the Faculty of Chemistry at UNAM (Univesidad Nacional Autonoma de México) we teach our students to use a number of tools to find the right chemical information. We use STN, SciFinder and Reaxys, as principal tools to retrieve the information. It is important that the students understand the use of each system in that way they can realize their advantage and the type of information that they can retrieve from each one of them.

Aknowledgments
This work was partially supported by a grant from Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico (DGAPA) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México PE205313 and IOCD (International Organization for Chemical Science in Development).

Keywords:

Chemical information, chemioinformatics, search.