BTFOLEY@UVMVM.BITNET (02/26/88)
From: Brian T Foley <BTFOLEY%UVMVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Hi BioNet!
I am a first-year graduate student at the University of Vermont.
I previously worked as a sequence annotator for GenBank for three
years, and I am helping to get UVM into the computer age in molecular
biology. What we have so far is the U of Wisconsin Genetics Computer
Group package with GenBank release 52.0 (Aug 1987), a BitNet line,
and an IBM PS/2 with a modem. Nobody knows how to use this stuff.
So I'm spending extra hours getting this system set up and learning
how to use it. Things are not always as they seem... (especially
not always as EASY as they seem). One big bug can ruin my whole day.
Anyway, I'm wondering if BioNet would be a help to us yet. Nobody
here is too interested in computing yet, but our department will almost
double in size next year (from 7 to 12 faculty), and I would like to
have good sequence analysis facilities available to the new staff who
might be more interested in this.
Would it be possible for me to get a class II account temporarily to
get the resource on-line and try it out? I haven't been able to talk
any of the current pricipal investigators here into buying an account
because they are not yet using computers for much of anything yet.
The one thing I feel I could contribute to the resource is to test
the data submission programs to GenBank, and give feedback to my
former co-workers there. I have entered a few sequences here at UVM that
are submittable. I'm not the only one who reads the latest JBC or
finds a sequence in a rare journal not covered by GenBank and ends up
typing in and annotating a sequence that we can't wait to compare to
ours. It would be nice if it was easy to pass our labor along to GenBank
in an easy way.
Even if GenBank had to enter the sequence once more to check our work
it would save some effort.
I would like to thank David Kristofferson for sending me the
information on BioNet. If I can't get a class II account now, I will be sure
to get somone interested in a class I account next year.
Sincerely
Brian T Foley
BTFOLEY@UVMVM
(802) 656-1116KRISTOFFERSON@BIONET-20.ARPA (02/26/88)
From: David Kristofferson <Kristofferson@BIONET-20.ARPA> Brian, You definitely sound like you have your hands full! I think that the best course for us to take would be for you to have one of the faculty members at Vermont contact me. BIONET is not currently testing GenBank data submission software (although we do have our own XGENPUB data submission program on-line) and class II accounts are reserved for software developers, bulletin board leaders, etc. We have often been asked for free accounts to try out BIONET. Unfortunately these accounts are not "free" to us since we have to pay the Telenet and Compuserve phone bills that people run up when using the system. The cost of BIONET ($400 per year) covers these (and only these!) charges. The rest of the resource is supported by the Division of Research Resources at the NIH. When I recall that I used to spend well over $400 for a 5 gram bottle of GTP that would last a couple of months and realize that the $400 BIONET fee gives unlimited access to all the programs, recent versions of the databases, unlimited worldwide electronic mail and bulletin board services, etc., AND covers the telephone connect time, it is apparent that BIONET is one of the most amazing offers available to scientists today. If we were to hand out free "trial" accounts it would become an accounting nightmare for us and quickly bankrupt our non-profit resource. I believe that if this is explained to your advisor(s), they will quickly assent to providing you with an account. Sincerely, David Kristofferson, Ph.D. BIONET Resource Manager kristofferson@bionet-20.arpa 415-962-7300 -------