Abstract
A relational database structure based on MS-Access and MySQL to store and manage proteomics data was established. This system may be used to publish two-dimensional electrophoretic proteomics data, and also may be accessed by external users who want to compare their own data with those in the databases. The maintenance of the database is managed centrally. The producers of proteomics data do not need to construct a database themselves. Users can introduce mass spectra into the database, which allows the searching of peptide mass fingerprints against their own protein sequence databases. The first release published in January 2002 contains data from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Helicobacter pylori, Borrelia garinii, Francisella tularensis, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Jurkat T-cells and mouse mammary gland projects (http://www.mpiib-berlin. mpg.de/2D-PAGE/).