FTC-Lilly settlement sheds light on e-mail privacy with patients.
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We present a new parallel computing approach to the case of exhaustive sequential sequence comparison algorithms on message-passing architectures. In this context a modification of guided self-scheduling as well as efficient buffering strategies are presented. We discuss two specific implementations, one on the Paramid parallel computer, and the other on a cluster of workstations running PVM. In both cases the parallel performance is higher than with any other method presented so far. The code is public domain and can be obtained by anonymous ftp at ftp.cnb.uam.es.
Gnome (GenomeNet Open Mail-service Environment) is a sequence analysis tool that enables an end-user to make use of several Internet- (mainly e-mail) based services with an easy-to-use graphical user interface. Users can conduct homology and motif searches, and database-entry retrieval against the latest databases by emitting search requests to and receiving their results form a search-server by e-mail. The search results are viewed and managed efficiently with this system. The Macintosh and X (Motif) versions of the Gnome client and the UNIX version of the Gnome server are available to academic users free of charge.
Culture collections are reservoirs of cultivable microbes, cell lines and gene libraries. Their role and duty are to supply biological resources to biomedical communities; nevertheless, their visibility from the public is low because most culture collections still have poor accesses via the Internet. Therefore the WFCC World Data Center on Micro-organisms (WDCM) developed a database that runs on IBM PCs and compatibles, which are the most popular computer and will be as powerful as workstations. The database includes various information: activities of 484 culture collections from 58 countries; an integrated list of their holdings of bacteria, fungi and yeast; and data entry system for culture collections.
This paper describes a new tool enabling awareness of new sequence databank entries of interest. The FastAlert system relieves the researcher from the burden of repeating FASTA searches in order to keep up with the rapidly growing amount of information found in biological sequence databanks. The query sequence can be submitted from any computer connected to the Internet. Upon registration, the databank, including the updates, is scanned at periodic intervals with the sequence provided. The results, so-called FastAlert reports, are delivered via electronic mail. The reports contain the FASTA best-scores list and the similarity statistics for each entry listed.
An Image Library of Biological Macromolecules is described, which contains image and text files related to structures of biological macromolecules. Currently, the Library has approximately 3000 image files of approximately 300 structures of biological macromolecules whose coordinates are available in the Protein Data Bank and in the Nucleic Acid Database. The entries include all RNA structures, approximately 70 DNA structures, 150 proteins and a few carbohydrates. The Library contains further images of amino acids, of standard and modified nucleotides and of nucleic acid model structures. Each entry consists of an annotation file with bibliographic and sequence information and possibly comments, of a color-coded distance plot and of structure images. Almost all of the images are available both in a mono and in a stereo representation. Standard procedures for generating these images were strictly avoided. Therefore, mixed rendering, coloring and labeling techniques were used extensively. Since May 1995 the Library has a growing division of images in the new Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) format. The Image Library of Biological Macromolecules can be accessed via the World-Wide Web (http://www.imb-jena.de/IMAGE.html). There is a large number of structures determined by experimental and/or modeling techniques which are not intended to be included into the Protein Data Bank or Nucleic Acid Database for some reason. The Image Library could be a repository of these structures and of images of these and other structures of biological macromolecules including structures which are not known at atomic detail. Authors who are willing to make available images or coordinates to the scientific community via the Image Library of Biological Macromolecules are requested to contact the author.
An animal genome database has been developed on a Unix workstation and maintained by a relational database management system. This database has focused on the comparative gene mapping between species to assist the mapping of the genes related to phenotypic traits in livestock. The linkage maps, cytogenetic maps, polymerase chain reaction primers of pig, cattle, mouse and human, and their references have been included in the database, and the correspondence among species have been stipulated in the database. In order to search the database effectively, the World Wide Web server (http://ws4.niai.affrc.go.jp/) and the electronic mail server system (e-mail: jgbase-mail@ niai.affrc.go.jp) have been developed on different Unix workstations. These servers are connected to the Internet.
The use of algorithms for calculation and analysis of RNA secondary structures has largely been limited to mainframe computers, mainly due to the 16-bit memory restrictions imposed by MS-DOS. The program presented here, RNAdraw, moves calculations to the 32-bit Microsoft Windows environments with an intuitive user interface with extensive viewing, editing and printing possibilities. The algorithms for secondary structure/basepair probability matrix/heat curve calculation have been ported directly from a 32-bit Unix environment. RNAdraw also offers novel features such as the options to edit energy parameters, extract structures of different probability levels, create de novo secondary structures interactively, and combine viewing of structures and basepair probabilities.
LALNVIEW is a graphical program for visualising local alignments between two sequences (protein or nucleic acids). Sequences are represented by coloured rectangles to give an overall picture of their similarities. LALNVIEW can display sequence features (exon, intron, active site, domain, propeptide, etc.) along with the alignment. When using LALNVIEW through our Web servers, sequence features are automatically extracted from database annotations (SWISS-PROT, GenBank, EMBL or HOVERGEN) and displayed with the alignment. LALNVIEW is a useful tool for analysing pairwise sequence alignments and for making the link between sequence homology and what is known about the structure or function of sequences. LALNVIEW executables for UNIX, Macintosh and PC computers are freely available from our server (http:// expasy.hcuge.ch/sprot/lalnview.html).
We have developed a computer program POLYAH and an algorithm for the identification of 3'-processing sites of human mRNA precursors. The algorithm is based on a linear discriminant function (LDF) trained to discriminate real poly(A) signal regions from the other regions of human genes possessing the AATAAA sequence which is most likely non-functional. As the parameters of LDF, various significant contextual characteristics of sequences surrounding AATAAA signals were used. An accuracy of method has been estimated on a set of 131 poly(A) regions and 1466 regions of human genes having the AATAAA sequence. When the threshold was set to predict 86% of poly(A) regions correctly, specificity of 51% and correlation coefficient of 0.62 had been achieved. The precision of this approach is better than for the other methods and has been tested on a larger data set. POLYAH can be used through World Wide Web (at Gene-Finder Home page: URL http:@dot.imgen.bcm.tmc.edu:9331/gene-finder/ gf.html) or by sending files with uncharacterized human sequences to the University of Houston or Weizmann Institute of Science e-mail servers.
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MOTIVATION: To make effective use of the vast amounts of expressed sequence tag (EST) sequence data generated by the Merck-sponsored EST project and other similar efforts, sequences must be organized into gene classes, and scientists must be able to 'mine' the gene class data in the context of related genomic data. RESULTS: This paper presents the Merck Gene Index browser, an easily extensible, World Wide Web-based system for mining the Merck Gene Index (MGI) and related genomic data. The MGI is a non-redundant set of clones and sequences, each representing a distinct gene, constructed from all high-quality 3' EST sequences generated by the Merck-sponsored EST project. The MGI browser integrates data from a variety of sources and storage formats, both local and remote, using an eclectic integration strategy, including a federation of relational databases, a local data warehouse and simple hypertext links. Data currently integrated include: LENS cDNA clone and EST data, dbEST protein and non-EST nucleic acid similarity data, WashU sequence chromatograms. Entrez sequence and Medline entries, and UniGene gene clusters. Flatfile sequence data are accessed using the Bioapps server, an internally developed client-server system that supports generic sequence analysis applications. Browser data are retrieved and formatted by means of the Bioinformatics Data Integration Toolkit (B-DIT), a new suite of Perl routines.
MOTIVATION: Although a large amount of information on the structure, function and properties of biomolecules is becoming available, it is difficult to understand the relationship between them. Thus, we have attempted to create an integrated relational database, search and visualization tool, 3DinSight, to help researchers to gain insight into their relationship. RESULTS: We have gathered data on the structure, function and properties of biomolecules, and implemented them into a relational database system. The structural data contain several subset data such as protein homologues, protein-DNA complex, in order to enable searching within a specific class of data. The functional data include motif sequence and mutation data of proteins. Also, various amino acid properties are implemented as a relational table. The World Wide Web (WWW) interfaces enable users to carry out various kinds of searches among these data. The locations of motif sequences and mutations are automatically mapped on the structure, and visualized in three-dimensional (3D) space by interactive viewers, VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and RasMol. In the case of VRML, the mapped 3D objects are hyper-linked to the corresponding document data. Also, amino acid properties, linked with structure, functional and mutation sites, can be displayed as graph plots. AVAILABILITY: 3DinSight is freely accessible through the Internet (http://www.rtc.riken.go.jp/3DinSight.h tml). CONTACT: sarai@rtc.riken.go.jp
MOTIVATION: With the main focus of the Human Genome Project shifting to sequencing, bioinformatics support for constructing large-scale genomic maps of other organisms is still required. We attempt to provide for this with our work, aimed at the delivery of robust and user-friendly contig-building software on the WWW. RESULTS: We present a prototype distributed analytical environment for molecular biologists working in the area of genomic mapping. It consists of the WWW server for constructing contigs from users' data with a hypertext output connected to Java-based map visualization software. AVAILABILITY: Freely available on http://www.mpimg-berlin-dahlem.mpg. de/ approximately andy/server/ CONTACT: andy@rag3.rz-berlin.mpg.de
MOTIVATION: The user-friendly, graphical X-windows interface (WPI) to the GCG sequence analysis package can often not be used due to the lack of an X-server on PC or Macintosh computers. Because Web browsers like Netscape are much more common on those platforms, we decided to develop W2H, a WWW interface to the GCG Sequence Analysis Software Package with nearly the same functionality as the X-windows interface WPI. RESULTS: The new WWW interface (W2H) to the GCG Sequence Analysis Software Package (Wisconsin Package) supports modern Web technologies, like client-pull method, or embedded scripting language, and provides a reasonable platform independence. The interface is quite comprehensive with advanced features like sequence selector, search set builder, enzyme chooser, access to sequence databases, uploading client files to the GCG server or displaying and manipulating graphical outputs in addition to GCG analysis programs. W2H also manages secure access to both GCG server and user data. For special environments, like workshops, conferences and company intranets, there is a special mode (Intranet mode) with less security constraints. The behaviour of W2H is mostly controlled by meta-data files describing the applications and giving a base for dynamic creation of HTML documents. This paper presents mainly the development approaches used, and architectural design aspects of W2H. AVAILABILITY: W2H is available by ftp://ftp.ebi.ac. uk/pub/software/unix/w2h or ftp://genome.dkfz-heidelberg.de/pub/w2h CONTACT: m.senger@ebi.ac.uk
UNLABELLED: BeoBLAST is an integrated software package that handles user requests and distributes BLAST and PSI-BLAST searches to nodes of a Beowulf cluster, thus providing a simple way to implement a scalable BLAST system on top of relatively inexpensive computer clusters. Additionally, BeoBLAST offers a number of novel search features through its web interface, including the ability to perform simultaneous searches of multiple databases with multiple queries, and the ability to start a search using the PSSM generated from a previous PSI-BLAST search on a different database. The underlying system can also handle automated querying for high throughput work. AVAILABILITY: Source code is available under the GNU public license at http://bioinformatics.fccc.edu/
UNLABELLED: Data in the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database is traditionally available in a flat file format that has a number of known shortcomings. With XML rapidly emerging as a standard data exchange format that can address some problems of flat file formats by defining data structure and syntax, there is now a demand to distribute EMBL data in an XML format. XEMBL is a service tool that employs CORBA servers to access EMBL data, and distributes the data in XML format via a number of mechanisms. AVAILABILITY: Use of the XEMBL service is free of charge at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/xembl/, and can be accessed via web forms, CGI, and a SOAP-enabled service. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Information on the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database is available at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/embl/. The EMBL Object Model is available at http://corba.ebi.ac.uk/models/. Information on the EMBL CORBA servers is at http://corba.ebi.ac.uk/