Plant Biology

Library Resources supporting the Plant Biology Graduate Program at UMass

National Center for Biotechnology Information and Other Genomic Data

"As a national resource for molecular biology information, NCBI's mission is to develop new information technologies to aid in the understanding of fundamental molecular and genetic processes that control health and disease. More specifically, the NCBI has been charged with creating automated systems for storing and analyzing knowledge about molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics..."

You can find instructions for using these closely linked databases here.

Some resources that may be of interest are listed below. Find a complete list if NCBI resources here :

Nucleotide
"The Nucleotide database is a collection of sequences from several sources, including GenBank, RefSeq, TPA and PDB. Genome, gene and transcript sequence data provide the foundation for biomedical research and discovery."
Protein
"The Protein database is a collection of sequences from several sources, including translations from annotated coding regions in GenBank, RefSeq and TPA, as well as records from SwissProt, PIR, PRF, and PDB."
Genome
"This resource organizes information on genomes including sequences, maps, chromosomes, assemblies, and annotations."
Structure
"Three dimensional structures provide a wealth of information on the biological function and the evolutionary history of macromolecules. They can be used to examine sequence-structure-function relationships, interactions, active sites, and more."

TAIR : The Arabidopsis Information Resource This link opens in a new window
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Genetic and molecular biology data for the model higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana . Data includes the complete genome sequence along with gene structure, gene product information, gene expression, DNA and seed stocks, genome maps, genetic and physical markers, publications, and information about the Arabidopsis research community.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Recommended Databases for Plant Biology

BIOSIS Citation Index This link opens in a new window
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Indexes content from journals, conferences, books, and U.S. patents covering the life sciences and biomedical research since 1926.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
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Index to articles from peer-reviewed journals in all disciplines.Search by cited reference, topic, author, and more. Arts and Humanities covers 1975-present; Social Sciences 1900-present; and Science 1900-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
BioOne This link opens in a new window
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Bioscience research journals in full text. Covers 179 titles from 136 society and nonprofit publishers, including some open access journals. Coverage varies; earliest is 1994-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
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National Library of Medicine's comprehensive database of citations to medical journal articles, with links to UMass-subscribed full text, 1946-present. PubMed includes all MEDLINE content, plus content from additional journals and books in the life sciences.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
CAB Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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CAB focuses on international development - providing access to the world’s applied life sciences literature, 1973 to present.

UMass Libraries' subscription includes: CAB Abstracts Archive; VetMed Resource.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
BioMed Central This link opens in a new window
Collection of almost 300 peer-reviewed open access journals, covering a wide variety of medical and life science topics.
Content is freely available for use by all.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
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Full-text scholarly journals and books in the sciences and the social sciences provided by Elsevier. Dates of coverage vary.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Database This link opens in a new window
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Collection of databases that index journal articles, book chapters, reports, conference proceedings, news, some in full text, published in the fields related to aquatic science, oceanography, water resources. See note for more detail. Varying coverage dates.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Biological and Agricultural Index This link opens in a new window
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Index to articles from more than 300 scientific journals on agriculture, biology, food production, nutrition, forestry, marine biology, plant pathology and ecology. Indexed 1984-present. Full text 1994-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Cold Spring Harbor Protocols This link opens in a new window
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Research methods for microbiology, genetics, bioinformatics, proteins, plant biology, neuroscience, lab organisms, and imaging.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Reaxys This link opens in a new window
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Organic, organo-metallic, and inorganic chemistry data. Find structures, properties, synthesis possibilities, reactions and bioactivity data. Searchable by structure, substructure, reaction, text, and property data. Reaxys also searches NIH PubChem and eMolecules.
Must create an account with a UMass Amherst email address to first use the database. After initial account creation, available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Finding Full Text & Interlibrary Loan

When you find an article you want, you can click on the UMass search button to get the full text.

The UMass search button connects to a tool that will find the full text online if it is available in any of the databases UMass has access to.

It will also search the library catalog to see if the library has it in print.

If an article or book is unavailable at UMass Amherst, you can get it using our Interlibrary Loan service. There will be a link to Request this resource through Interlibrary Loan on the window that opens after you click the UMass search button.

Here's a screenshot as an example of you might see after clicking the UMass search button.

More about Interlibrary Loan

To log into Interlibrary Loan use your UMass NetID and password (same as what you use for SPIRE and Moodle or Blackboard).

The first time you use Interlibrary Loan, you will be prompted to fill out a profile form, so we know who you are and how to contact you when your item arrives.

NOTE: In the Delivery Preferences section of the profile form, you must choose a Loan Delivery Method and a Pickup Location. All article requests are delivered electronically, so these options do not apply to articles.

After completing the profile, you should then see a pre-populated article request form. Make sure all the required fields are completed (sometimes they don't all transfer to the form), then submit it and usually in 1-2 business days you'll get an email that your article has arrived! The email will include a link into the Interlibrary Loan system, where your article PDF will be available to print or download.