By Randall Osborne

West Coast Editor

Celera Genomics entered a collaboration with Proteome Inc. in a deal that gives access to human, worm and yeast annotation.

"It's genomics- and proteomics-based," said Sharan Pagano, director of business development and marketing for Beverly, Mass.-based Proteome. No financial terms were disclosed.

Specifically, the agreement gives Celera, of Rockville, Md., access to the BioKnowledge Library, to be linked and distributed through the Celera Discovery System for researchers.

The library comprises searchable Proteome databases, updated weekly from scientific literature for comparison of biological pathways and molecular interactions.

Privately held Proteome, begun five years ago, fills a need for biotech and pharmaceutical companies, as well as more conventional database firms, Pagano said. Earlier this week, the provider of biological knowledge-based products launched the first human databases coupling protein functional information to the human genome.

"The genome is linear, in a sense, and the fruits of it we see in companies like Celera and Incyte [Genomics Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif.]," she told BioWorld Today, speaking from The Institute for Genomics Research's 12th annual Genome Sequencing and Analysis Conference in Miami, where Proteome gave a presentation and made public the Celera deal. "You can use that information to do functional genomics."

But to find connections in data provided by such platforms, information such as peer-reviewed journals publish is required. Scientists seldom have the time or ability to search them all - and might easily miss articles, if they did, Pagano said.

That's where Proteome comes in. The deal combines Proteome's BioKnowledge Library with Celera's tools, making Celera the first company to redistribute Proteome's human, worm and yeast annotation.

The field of proteomic and genomic databases is becoming more crowded. At the same conference, Compugen Ltd., of Tel Aviv, Israel, launched its Gencarta platform, providing access to the company's proprietary annotated genome, transcriptome and proteome databases.

Celera's stock (NYSE:CRA) closed Thursday at $100, up $0.125. Compugen (NASDAQ:CGEN) closed at $17.06, up 6 cents.