Elsevier Releases Pathway Studio Web Plant; a Powerful New Solution to Improve Global Research on Critical Crop Production and Protection

NEW YORK, October 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Flexible informatics solution provides commercial and academic plant researchers with a comprehensive knowledgebase of molecular information from the top research journals

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the release of Pathway Studio Web Plant. This web-based research solution helps plant scientists explore breeding through trait analysis, and enables them to make more informed decisions at critical stages of crop production and protection research.

Plant researchers are applying genomics information to address the urgent needs of sustaining production - maximizing yield in difficult conditions, and protecting crops in environmentally safe ways. To meet these challenges, they require access to molecular information on beneficial traits, and to analytical tools that interpret reference and experimental data.

Pathway Studio Web Plant has a unique knowledgebase of molecular relationships and curated pathways from three model plant organisms: Arabidopsis, Maize, and Rice. It also provides powerful analytical and visualization tools, that help plant biologists contextualize complex biology involved in conditions that affect crop yield, such as drought sensitivity and disease resistance.

"Pathway Studio Plant, which is also available as an Enterprise solution, is an important technology to advance research on crop breeding and sustainability," said Jaqui Hodgkinson, Vice President of Product Development, Life Science Solutions, Elsevier. "The web version of Pathway Studio Plant enables access for even more plant researchers in academic and commercial institutions worldwide. The Enterprise edition of Pathway Studio adds additional advanced functionality to support plant breeding research, and the ability for researchers to create in-house plant databases."

Currently the Pathway Studio Plant knowledge base contains information on more than 130,000 molecular interactions, extracted from 60,000 full text plant-specific articles. Maintained by Elsevier and updated weekly as part of the subscription agreement, the Pathway Studio knowledgebase and pathway collections summarize the state of current research on Arabidopsis, Maize, and Rice.

With Pathway Studio Plant, researchers now have a single solution that combines disparate information found across many different public databases. With its filtering and inferred relationship capabilities plant researchers can rapidly annotate hundreds of proteins and reconstruct hundreds of pathways, expanding the depth and breadth of scientific enquiry for their plant of choice, and supporting confident research decisions.

Pathway Studio Plant is a part of Elsevier's Life Science Solutions, a suite of interoperable, domain-specific, decision support tools which span the discovery and development workflow; including ScienceDirect, Scopus, TargetInsights, Reaxys, Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry, PharmaPendium, QUOSA and Embase.

For further information go to elsevier.com/pathway-studio

About Pathway Studio

A robust informatics solution, Pathway Studio provides scientists with an unparalleled knowledge base of molecular interactions drawn from literature-based evidence. Integrated data mining, analytical, and visualization capabilities rapidly connect relevant biological relationships and interpret experimental data. Presented in a visual context, results can be used to define and test in silico-based hypotheses across a wide range of disciplines, increasing efficiency and research confidence. For more information, got to: http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/pathway-studio

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions in the Science, Medical, Legal and Risk and Business sectors, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

Media contact
Liz Griffioen
Elsevier
+31-20-485-2247
L.griffioen@elsevier.com