FlyBase has added a completely new report type: chemicals used in Drosophila experiments. The new chemical reports include the identifier FBch, links to the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and/or PubChem database chemical reports, information about the chemical provided by ChEBI and PubChem (structure, definition, synonyms, and biological uses), and a list of references that describe the use of the chemical in flies. These reports can be accessed by searching for the chemical in QuickSearch, using either the Data Class tab, which allows searching chemical names and ChEBI terms, or the Search FlyBase tab.

We have also incorporated the ChEBI ontologies for Chemical Application and Biological Role, which can be browsed from the Vocabularies browser, accessible from the vocabularies icon on the home page or from the Tools dropdown menu on every page. Here you can browse or search the roles vocabularies to find related sets of chemicals grouped by function. From there, you can access publications in which the chemicals have been used.

In the future, we expect to expand our annotation of chemicals to include uses of chemicals to cause or treat disease in fly models and the phenotypic effects of chemical treatments in flies.