BioRadBase: A database for bioremediation of radioactive waste

Radioactive waste from different sectors such as nuclear energy, health care and food has become a discernible part of our environment. Several dumping methods are in routine practice to dispose radioactive wastes. Huge chemical and energy input in various skillful physico-chemical methods has limited their use while biological methods exploring the potential of micro-organisms could be a promising and eco-friendly approach to remediate radioactive pollutants. Bio-transformation, bio-accumulation and bio-sorption are key processes that have been tried for radionuclide remediation. BioRaDBase is the first database dedicated to micro-organisms which have been explored or engineered to remediate radioactive waste from the environment. The database serves as a comprehensive knowledgebase to search bacteria and fungi which have the ability to transform radioactive waste. This database would be a useful tool for the development of new bio-remediation technologies to clean up radioactive waste from the environment. The information in database has been managed under five classes, that is, type of radioactive waste, micro-organisms, genus listing, literature and waste management. The entries are also linked to external databases such as National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), providing wide background information. Beside these, under the news section of the database, a user can connect to dedicated organizations working on issues like environmental protection, nuclear energy and radionuclide dumping. BioRaDBase can be accessed at http://biorad.igib.res.in.Keywords: Bioremediation of radioactive waste (BioRaDBase), radionuclides, biotransformation, biocrystallization, radioisotope, nuclear wast

Correction: ExtremeDB: A Unified Web Repository of Extremophilic Archaea and Bacteria.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063083.]

ExtremeDB: A Unified Web Repository of Extremophilic Archaea and Bacteria

<div><p>Extremophiles are the microorganisms which can survive under extreme conditions of temperature, pressure, pH, salinity etc. They have gained much attention for their potential role in biotechnological and industrial applications. The large amount of experimental data in the literature is so diverse, that it becomes difficult and time consuming for the researcher to implement it in various areas of research. Therefore, a systematic arrangement of data and redirection in a similar fashion through web interface can assist researchers in analyzing the data as per their requirement. ExtremeDB is a freely available web based relational database which integrates general characteristics, genome-proteome information, industrial applications and recent scientific investigations of the seven major groups of 865 extremophillic microorganisms. The search options are user friendly and analyses tools such as Compare and Extreme BLAST have been incorporated for comparative analysis of two or more extremophiles and determining the sequence similarity of a given protein/nucleotide in relation to other extremophiles respectively. The effort put forth herein in the form of database, would open up new avenues on the potential utility of extremophiles in applied research. ExtremeDB is freely accessible via <a href="http://extrem.igib.res.in" target="_blank">http://extrem.igib.res.in</a>.</p></div

Characteristics of available and In-process Microorganisms (865) in ExtremeDB.

<p>Blue line corresponds to the information available in the current version (v1.0), whereas the red line indicates the ongoing work which will be amended in the next build.</p

Flow chart describing the methodology and process in ExtremeDB.

<p>Flow chart describing the methodology and process in ExtremeDB.</p

A carved figure showing the result of compare tool in ExtremeDB.

<p>A carved figure showing the result of compare tool in ExtremeDB.</p

A carved figure showing the features of advanced search in ExtremeDB.

<p>A carved figure showing the features of advanced search in ExtremeDB.</p