MeSH terms are a controlled vocubulary used to catalog and index the article records in PubMed. They are arranged into tree structures and are updated every year to include new developments. These term are also useful to create your search strategy for information retrieval. You can think of MeSH terms as tags on an article. When an article is indexed for MEDLINE, an indexer at the National Library of Medicine applies these tags to indicate the primary subjects of the article. Each indexed article has a set of MeSH terms that describe the content of the citation.
Although MeSH terms can be used in PubMed searches, they are found in their own database. This database is similar to searching PubMed but keep in mind that:
To search MeSH, click on MeSH Database under Explore on near the bottom of the PubMed main page.
The National Library of Medicine has produced a short video on MeSH Click here to view.
Here are some recommended biology oline resources:
The American Institute of Biological Sciences is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) scientific association dedicated to advancing the biological sciences to promote an increased understanding of all life. The mission is to promote the use of scientific information to inform decision making and advance biology for the benefit of science and society.
The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is an international nonprofit scientific and educational organization.
"AmphibiaWeb is an online system that provides access to information on amphibian declines, conservation, natural history, and taxonomy. "
"The Bartleby.com edition of Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body features 1,247 vibrant engravings—many in color—from the classic 1918 publication, as well as a subject index with 13,000 entries ranging from the Antrum of Highmore to the Zonule of Zinn."
"The Animal Diversity Web is an online database and encyclopedia of animal natural history, built through contributions from students, photographers, and many others. It is a rich and flexible resource designed both as an encyclopedia for exploring biodiversity and for use in formal, inquiry-based education."
This University of Pittsburgh digital collection consists of a complete double elephant folio set (435 plates) of Audubon’s Birds of America and his Ornithological Biography.
"Welcome to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global 'biodiversity commons.' BHL also serves as the foundational literature component of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)."
BMC has an evolving portfolio of some 300 peer-reviewed journals, sharing discoveries from research communities in science, technology, engineering and medicine.
Database of useful biological numbers
This office serves CDC programs, other federal agencies, state health departments, and other external partners by identifying, evaluating, implementing evidence-based genomics practices to preventing, and controlling the country’s leading chronic, infectious, environmental, and occupational diseases.
"Welcome to CDC WONDER -- Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research -- an easy-to-use, menu-driven system that makes the information resources of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) available to public health professionals and the public at large. It provides access to a wide array of public health information."
"Our knowledge of the many life-forms on Earth - of animals, plants, fungi, protists and bacteria - is scattered around the world in books, journals, databases, websites, specimen collections, and in the minds of people everywhere. Imagine what it would mean if this information could be gathered together and made available to everyone – anywhere – at a moment’s notice. This dream is becoming a reality through the Encyclopedia of Life."
"Human Microbiome Project aims to characterize the microbial communities found at several different sites on the human body, including nasal passages, oral cavities, skin, gastrointestinal tract, and urogenital tract, and to analyze the role of these microbes in human health and disease."
"Our web site is dedicated to bringing you the excitement, latest findings, and profound implications of the scientific exploration of human origins."
"The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information."
"The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is part of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s preeminent museum and research complex. The Museum is dedicated to inspiring curiosity, discovery, and learning about the natural world through its unparalleled research, collections, exhibitions, and education outreach programs."
"Welcome to Nature, the weekly, international, interdisciplinary journal of science. Nature is the world's most highly cited interdisciplinary science journal, according to the 2010 Journal Citation Reports Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011)."
"The USDA PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories."
"We are a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization. Our mission is to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Every article that we publish is open-access - freely available online for anyone to use. Sharing research encourages progress, from protecting the biodiversity of our planet to finding more effective treatments for diseases such as cancer."
"PLOS Biology is an open-access, peer-reviewed general biology journal published by the PLOS, a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource. New articles are published online weekly; issues are published monthly."
"PLOS Computational Biology is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal featuring works of exceptional significance that further our understanding of living systems at all scales through the application of computational methods. It is an official journal of the International Society for Computational Biology."
"PLOS ONE is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication. PLOS ONE welcomes reports on primary research from any scientific discipline."
Reflecting the full breadth of research on bacteria, fungi, parasites, prions and viruses, PLOS Pathogens publishes outstanding original research and commentary that significantly advance the understanding of pathogens and how they interact with their host organisms.
"PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). 2.5 MILLION articles are archived in PMC."
"SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online is a model for cooperative electronic publishing of scientific journals on the Internet. It was conceived to meet the scientific communication needs of developing countries, particularly Latin America and the Caribbean countries.
DOE ScienceCinema is a multimedia search tool provided by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information, with video and audio files produced by DOE National Laboratories, other DOE research facilities, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).
"Are you looking for trusted content? ScienceDirect scientific database contains more than 10 million journal articles and book chapters."
"Scitable is a free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science. Scitable currently concentrates on genetics and cell biology, which include the topics of evolution, gene expression, and the rich complexity of cellular processes shared by living organisms. Scitable also offers resources for the budding scientist, with advice about effective science communication and career paths."
SORA is the world's first and largest open access ornithological publications archive. This resource is the product of collaborations between the American Ornithologists Union, the Cooper Ornithological Society, the Association of Field Ornithologists, the Wilson Ornithological Society and the University of New Mexico Libraries
"SpringerOpen is Springer's new range of fully open access journals, which cover all disciplines within the science, technology, and medicine (STM) fields, giving authors in all areas of science the opportunity to publish open access. The entire content published in a SpringerOpen journal is freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication."
"Understanding Evolution is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology. This site is here to help you understand what evolution is, how it works, how it factors into your life, how research in evolutionary biology is performed, and how ideas in this area have changed over time."
"The PLANTS Database provides standardized information about the vascular plants, mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens of the U.S. and its territories."
"The long-term goal of the Visible Human Project® is to produce a system of knowledge structures that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats such as the names of body parts."
"Conceived by Mathematica creator and scientist Stephen Wolfram as a way to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience, the Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an open-code resource that uses dynamic computation to illuminate concepts in science, technology, mathematics, art, finance, and a remarkable range of other fields."
Listed below are some key search terms for you to use when searching for resources about your biology assignment:
biomphalaria
“biomphalaria glabrata”
“disease vectors”
DNA
genetics
“immune system”
infections
“infectious diseases”
"living organisms"
parasites
parasitology
pathogenicity
proteins
“schistosoma mansoni”
schistosomiasis
snails
“vector borne”
“vector borne diseases”
