As the fund of critical biological information swells, medical research will wallow in it unless it is creatively and effectively organized. Currently, Protein Reviews on the Web (PROW) is a pilot project to explore using human proteins as the organizing principle around which to build a conceptual web of biological concepts. Its success will depend on our developing excellent strategies for organizing information and our tapping into a commitment of the biologic community to help develop and sustain such a resource. The end-product is a WWW resource/journal consisting of online reviews on human protein (and their orthologs in other species) maintained by biological experts in the research community. We are building on the tradition of the International Workshop on Human Leukocyte Differentiation Antigens whose """"""""CD guides"""""""" are concise, organized (structured) summaries on each molecule. We are making the summaries: more comprehensive; freely available on the www; and even more authoritative by instituting peer- review. Already we have on the www guides on more than 120 of the CD molecules, have demonstrated remarkable co-operation of biologists, and begun to develop excellent tools for managing the process.
