kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson) (06/19/91)
I am pleased to announce that the GenBank entry retrieval server has been upgraded. Thanks to Eliot Lear of GenBank/IG for his help on this project. The current detailed help file for the server follows. This can be retrieved by sending the word HELP to retrieve@genbank.bio.net in the body of the message (no Subject: line). The server now allows retrieval of multiple sequences in a single e-mail submission as described below. Because of the increasing popularity of the service, we have also had to queue retrieval requests instead of executing them immediately as we did previously. This may add a couple minutes of additional delay into the response time. Because of a disk space shortage, retrieval of GenBank entries had to be taken off line temporarily during the indexing process for release 68 which is going into production. We regret the inconvenience and will restore the service ASAP. FASTA searches and e-mail retrieval from databases other than GenBank (EMBL, SWISS-PROT, GENPEPT) are not affected. Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RETRIEVAL SERVER INSTRUCTIONS Database entries can be retrieved by either locus name or accession number. To use the GenBank Retrieval System, send an electronic message to RETRIEVE@GENBANK.BIO.NET containing as text (leave the Subject: line blank) either accession numbers (one per line) and/or entry names (one per line). Multiple entries may be submitted in a single message using the following format: CHKTUBA BNACYP J02852 J02855 Each sequence found will be returned in a separate mail message. The data banks are searched in the order: GenBank New Data, GenBank current release, EMBL New Data, EMBL current release, GenPept New Data, GenPept current release, and Swiss-Prot until a match is found. If an entry exists in both GenBank and EMBL with the same accession number (the usual case), a query on the accession number will return the GenBank version of the entry. If the EMBL-format version is required, it can be retrieved from the file server at NETSERV@EMBL-Heidelberg.DE (for instructions send a message containing the line HELP to that address). To retrieve GenPept entries, use the LOCUS name of the corresponding GenBank entry followed by a _1, or _n where n represents the nth coding region in that GenBank entry. For example, ASNTUBBA_1 is the GenPept LOCUS name for the translation of the first coding region from GenBank entry ASNTUBBA. Please note that e-mail retrieval server requests are now placed in a queue for processing versus being handled immediately as was the case in the past. Thus it may take a couple of minutes longer now to get your entries back if many people have submitted requests at the same time. This inconvenience was necessary due to the increasing popularity of the service. All batch queues on GOS may be monitored by sending the word QUEUE to SEARCH@GENBANK.BIO.NET. Retrieval requests are entered into the "g" queue. IF YOU DO NOT FIND YOUR ENTRY ON THE SERVER: Authors often request that data be held in confidence until after publication even though they have already been assigned an accession number for their data. This adds an additional delay in data release because the databank staff must ascertain that the data has appeared in print. If you have a reference to sequence data but can not retrieve the data from the e-mail server, please send the literature reference and accession number (or locus name) to UPDATE@GENOME.LANL.GOV and the data will be released to the server as soon as verification of publication is made. DATA SUBMISSION An electronic version of the sequence data submission form used by the sequence data banks is also available through the RETRIEVE server. To receive a copy, send a message containing the word DATASUB as the only line. Instructions for completing and submitting the form are included. We would appreciate it if you would use this form only if you can not use our free Authorin data submission software for the IBM PC and Macintosh. Copies of Authorin may be requested by sending e-mail to authorin@genbank.bio.net. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to mail them to RETRIEVE-REQUEST@GENBANK.BIO.NET.