the database of key numbers in molecular biology

About Us

In BioNumbers we aim to enable you to find in one minute any useful molecular biology number that can be important for your research. BioNumbers currently attracts >3000 visitors a month from over 50 countries. To cite BioNumbers please refer to: Milo et al. Nucl. Acids Res. (2010) 38 (suppl 1): D750-D753. The BioNumbers database started in 2007 by Ron Milo, Paul Jorgensen and Mike Springer while sharing a bay at the Systems Biology department in Harvard. It was inspired by a table comparing values of key properties in bacteria, yeast and a mammalian cell line in Uri Alon’s book – Introduction to systems biology and by the CyberCell Project . BioNumbers is coordinated and developed at the Milo lab in the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Feel free to write us a note at [email protected]. The current database format was designed and implemented by Griffin Weber at Harvard. The full version was programmed and is being developed by Zaztech and ProperDev. The BioNumbers logo was designed by Ricardo Vidal. It is our hope that the database will facilitate quantitative analysis and reasoning in a field of research where numbers tend to be “soft” and difficult to vouch for. Financial as well as moral support for the effort is being given by the Systems biology department in Harvard and by the Weizmann Institute.

Did you ever need to look up a number like the volume of a cell or the cellular concentration of ATP, only to find yourself spending much more time than you wanted on the Internet or flipping through textbooks - all without much success? 

Well, it didn’t happen only to you. It is often surprising how difficult it can be to find concrete biological numbers, even for properties that have been measured numerous times. To help solve this for one and all, BioNumbers (the database of key numbers in molecular biology) was created. Along with the numbers, you'll find the relevant references to the original literature, useful comments, and related numbers. 

Though we have made an honest first try at simplifying the process of finding useful biological numbers, there is still much work to be done. A key challenge is filling in the large number of missing items. Another challenge involves setting up a reliable and discriminating search engine which on a first try yields the numbers a user is actually interested in finding.

Resources

Download the BioNumbers database

BioNumbers highlights: Collection of fundamental numbers in molecular biology BioNumbers description handout: Short description of BioNumbers and a collection of interesting bioNumbers Specialized BioNumbers collections: Handouts geared to specific communities. For example, a collection focusing on photosynthesis. Please suggest a subject for which you would like to have one. BioNumbers in the news: Media coverage of BioNumbers . BioNumbers presentations Introduces the concept and some applications as well as a collection of slides with interesting BioNumbers Handbooks of BioNumbers: useful book resources . Basic cell properties comparison table: An updated version of a table in Uri Alon's book Introduction to systems biology. Quantitative biology problem sets: Aimed at courses teaching biology these questions make use of BioNumbers to develop quantitative reasoning about biological systems. For example: Putting absolute numbers on a sporulation model. Please contribute your ideas for good questions. To cite BioNumbers please refer to Milo et al. Nucl. Acids Res. (2010) 38 (suppl 1): D750-D753. More details and future directions for BioNumbers can be found at http://openwetware.org/wiki/BioNumbers. We welcome all suggestions to improving BioNumbers. Please send suggestions to [email protected]. Other neat resources: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale