AssayAn assay is an investigative (analytic) procedure in laboratory medicine, mining, pharmacology, environmental biology and molecular biology for qualitatively assessing or quantitatively measuring the presence, amount, or functional activity of a target entity. The measured entity is often called the analyte, the measurand, or the target of the assay. The analyte can be a drug, biochemical substance, chemical element or compound, or cell in an organism or organic sample.
Chemical databaseA chemical database is a database specifically designed to store chemical information. This information is about chemical and crystal structures, spectra, reactions and syntheses, and thermophysical data. Bioactivity databases correlate structures or other chemical information to bioactivity results taken from bioassays in literature, patents, and screening programs. Chemical structures are traditionally represented using lines indicating chemical bonds between atoms and drawn on paper (2D structural formulae).