<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I am a fellow at the systems biology department in Harvard,
and I am very interested in photosynthesis research. Have been enjoying getting
useful information through your mailing list. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I thought the following item might be of interest even
though more general than photosynthesis per se.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>I have a non-standard post, but one that will
hopefully be of interest to this community. A group of us in the systems
biology department at Harvard Medical have built a database to store useful
biological numbers ( <a href="www.bionumbers.org"
title="blocked::www.bionumbers.org">www.bionumbers.org</a> ), such as cell and
organelle sizes, diffusion coefficients, protein concentrations, and much more
ranging from molecular biology to physiology and ecology.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>We built the database because of a common
realization of how many hours it can take to find even the most trivial numbers
in the biological literature. And then once the number is found, where to store
the information for future use? Bionumbers is more permanent and more
searchable than post-it notes. The site is meant to rapidly connect you
to literature sources - a sort of Pubmed for numbers, and provide wiki-like to
comment on numbers as well as contribute new numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>Please check out our database and maybe even enter
some numbers you would like to keep track of - all database users will benefit
from your entry. BioNumbers is a long-term project and will be
continually improved for the foreseeable future. Any suggestions to make
the database more useful are very welcome ( bionumbers@gmail.com ).<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
