SUMMARY: The field of synthetic biology lacks a comprehensive knowledgebase for selecting synthetic target molecules according to their functions, economic applications and known biosynthetic pathways. We implemented ChemHub, a knowledgebase containing >90 000 chemicals and their functions, along with related biosynthesis information for these chemicals that was manually extracted from >600 000 published studies by more than 100 people over the past 10 years. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: Multiple algorithms were implemented to enable biosynthetic pathway design and precursor discovery, which can support investigation of the biosynthetic potential of these functional chemicals. ChemHub is freely available at: http://www.rxnfinder.org/chemhub/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

MOTIVATION: The 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak has significantly affected global health and society. Thus, predicting biological function from pathogen sequence is crucial and urgently needed. However, little work has been conducted to identify viruses by the enzymes that they encode, and which are key to pathogen propagation. RESULTS: We built a comprehensive scientific resource, SARS2020, which integrates coronavirus-related research, genomic sequences and results of anti-viral drug trials. In addition, we built a consensus sequence-catalytic function model from which we identified the novel coronavirus as encoding the same proteinase as the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus. This data-driven sequence-based strategy will enable rapid identification of agents responsible for future epidemics. AVAILABILITYAND IMPLEMENTATION: SARS2020 is available at http://design.rxnfinder.org/sars2020/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

MOTIVATION: Molecular scaffolds are useful in medicinal chemistry to describe, discuss and visualize series of chemical compounds, biochemical transformations and associated biological properties. RESULTS: Here, we present RxnBLAST as a web-based tool for analyzing scaffold transformations and reactive chemical environment features in bioreactions. RxnBLAST extracts chemical features from bioreactions including atom-atom mapping, reaction centers, rules and functional groups to help understand chemical compositions and reaction patterns. Core-to-Core is proposed, which can be utilized in scaffold networks and for constructing a reaction space, as well as providing guidance for subsequent biosynthesis efforts. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: RxnBLAST is available at: http://design.rxnfinder.org/rxnblast/.