Norine, the knowledgebase dedicated to non-ribosomal peptides, is now open to crowdsourcing

Since its creation in 2006, Norine remains the unique knowledgebase dedicated to non-ribosomal peptides (NRPs). These secondary metabolites, produced by bacteria and fungi, harbor diverse interesting biological activities (such as antibiotic, antitumor, siderophore or surfactant) directly related to the diversity of their structures. The Norine team goal is to collect the NRPs and provide tools to analyze them efficiently. We have developed a user-friendly interface and dedicated tools to provide a complete bioinformatics platform. The knowledgebase gathers abundant and valuable annotations on more than 1100 NRPs. To increase the quantity of described NRPs and improve the quality of associated annotations, we are now opening Norine to crowdsourcing. We believe that contributors from the scientific community are the best experts to annotate the NRPs they work on. We have developed MyNorine to facilitate the submission of new NRPs or modifications of stored ones. This article presents MyNorine and other novelties of Norine interface released since the first publication. Norine is freely accessible from the following URL: http://bioinfo.lifl.fr/NRP.