ChEBI

---

title: "ChEBI" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["biological-databases", "chemical-databases", "chemical-nomenclature", "science-and-technology-in-cambridgeshire", "south-cambridgeshire-district"] description: "Chemical database and ontology of molecular entities" topic_path: "technology/databases" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChEBI" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Chemical database and ontology of molecular entities ::

::data[format=table title="infobox biodatabase"]

Field	Value
title	Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI)
logo	[[File:ChEBI logo.png
description	Chemical database
scope	Small chemical compounds
center	European Molecular Biology Laboratory EU
laboratory	European Bioinformatics Institute UK
url
citation	de Matos et al
download
webservice
sparql	BIO2RDF
webapp
frequency	monthly
curation	Manually curated
::

| title = Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) |logo = [[File:ChEBI logo.png|100px]] |description = Chemical database |scope = Small chemical compounds |organism = |center = European Molecular Biology Laboratory EU |laboratory = European Bioinformatics Institute UK |author = |released = |standard = |format = |url = |citation = de Matos et al |download = |webservice = |sql = |sparql = BIO2RDF |webapp = |standalone = |license = |versioning = |frequency = monthly |curation = Manually curated

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, also known as ChEBI, is a chemical database and ontology of molecular entities focused on "small" chemical compounds, that is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) effort at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). The term "molecular entity" refers to any "constitutionally or isotopically distinct atom, molecule, ion, ion pair, radical, radical ion, complex, conformer, etc., identifiable as a separately distinguishable entity". The molecular entities in question are either products of nature or synthetic products which have potential bioactivity. Molecules directly encoded by the genome, such as nucleic acids, proteins and peptides derived from proteins by proteolytic cleavage, are not as a rule included in ChEBI.

ChEBI uses nomenclature, symbolism and terminology endorsed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and nomenclature committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (NC-IUBMB).

Scope and access

All data in the database is non-proprietary or is derived from a non-proprietary source. It is thus freely accessible and available to anyone. In addition, each data item is fully traceable and explicitly referenced to the original source. It is related in scope to other databases such as ChEMBL, ChemSpider, DrugBank, MetaboLights and PubChem.

ChEBI data is available through a public web application, web services, SPARQL endpoint and downloads.

References

References

1. (2010). "Chemical Entities of Biological Interest: an update". Nucleic Acids Research.
2. (2008). "ChEBI: a database and ontology for chemical entities of biological interest". Nucleic Acids Research.
3. "molecular entity".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::