CCL: Replies on Batch Substructure Searching



     Many thanks to all those who replied to my question on
 software for 2D substructure searching:
     A colleage of mine is looking for a non-interactive program
 which will take two 2D structures, compare them, and say whether
 one is present as a substructure in the other.  He wants to do a
 large number of pair-wise comparisons, so batch operation is a
 must.  He'd obviously prefer that the program be available
 without cost.
 Here are the replies:
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 The key in such an application is an efficient algorithm for
 substructure matching. With such an algorithm available, it is
 quite trivial to make the job done in a batch mode.
 You can check the following paper for an efficient substructure
 perception algorithm, but the source code is, unfortunately, not
 free.
 Lingran Chen and Wolfgang Robien:
 	MCSS: A New Algorithm for Perception of Maximal Common
 	Substructures and Its Application to NMR Spectral Studies.
 	1. The Algorithm,
 	J. Chem. Inf. Comput.Sci., 1992, 32, 501-506.
 Hope this will help.
 -Lingran
 Lingran Chen, Ph.D.
 Senior Scientific Programmer
 MDL Information Systems, Inc.
 14600 Catalina Street
 San Leandro
 CA 94577
 Phone: (510) 895-1313, Ext. 1305
 FAX:   (510) 614-3616
 Email: LCHEN (+ at +) MDLI.COM
 URL:   http://www.mdli.com
        http://syngen2.chem.brandeis.edu/~chen/lingran.html
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 Tripos' Unity will do this, although not at zero cost.
 Cheers,
 Dave
 Dr. David A. Winkler                      Voice: 61-3-9542-2477
 Principal Research Scientist              Fax:   61-3-9543-8160
 CSIRO Division of Chemicals and Polymers  http://www.csiro.au
 Private Bag 10,Clayton South MDC,         http://www.wark.csiro.au
 Clayton 3169, Australia
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 Can't help you with the "without cost" part, but this is
 definitely possible with CS ChemFinder for Windows and a smidgen
 of Visual Basic.  I've done it.  You should have no problem doing
 several thousand to several tens of thousands of pairs an hour,
 depending on how fast a machine you're using.  More information
 about ChemFinder is available from http://www.camsoft.com, or
 from me in a pinch.
 Jonathan Brecher
 CambridgeSoft Corporation
 jsb (+ at +) camsoft.com
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 Paul Soper                        All the usual disclaimers apply
 DuPont Central Research             soperpd (+ at +) esvax.dnet.dupont.com
 P.O. Box 80328                                 Tel (302)-695-1757
 Wilmington, DE 19880-0328                      FAX (302)-695-2112
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