golub@NET.BIO.NET (Ellis Golub) (07/27/89)
The following e-mail letter was sent to Jim Cassett at the NIH to
protest the end of funding for BIONET.
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Dear Dr. Cassett:
I am writing to express my opposition to the proposed
suspension of BIONET. As a subscriber for some years, I have
closely watched the evolution of BIONET, and have both supported
and opposed specific actions of the BIONET staff. On the whole,
however, I have found BIONET to be an important adjunct to my
research, and that of my colleagues.
In our institute, most of the research is NIH supported, and,
over the last few years, molecular biology has become one of the
dominant levels of investigation. BIONET was important in helping
us to make this transition by:
1. providing access to the nucleic acid, protein,
crystallographic, vector, restriction enzyme and
other more specialized databases
2. providing software to use on the databases
3. providing electronic mail facilities and training
4. providing a link to the molecular biology community
5. locating colleagues for collaborations
6. providing a sounding board for ideas
7. stimulating the production of new software
At this stage, we rely on BIONET for updated sequence information,
new ideas in sequence analysis, and collegial discourse on the
problem and prospects of sequence analysis problems. The loss of
this facility will hurt every project in our School, and will
result in increased costs for sequence analysis and database
access, costs which NIH will ultimately bear. From the service
point of view, BIONET more than met our expectations and
requirements, and could be criticized only for its own success:
that is the wide use of the system resulted in some computational
constipation. This situation would probably have improved with the
installation of the SUN distributed processing network.
In my particular case, the loss of BIONET will be acutely
felt. I began my own research into the analysis of protein
secondary structure from sequence at about the time that BIONET
was beginning. This topic has received considerable attention at
BIONET, and I received lots of help from other users, and from
BIONET staff. In addition, the communications and bulletin board
facilities at BIONET allowed me to identify colleagues in
Philadelphia and other locations, whom I had not met otherwise, and
with whom I have collaborated and interacted in many ways. While
some of these bulletin boards may continue in other forms, the
focus of BIONET will ultimately dilute their effects and diminish
their activity.
Finally, I must speak to the broader effects of the demise of
BIONET. At a time when we are attempting to exploit the new
techniques of molecular biology, and to harness computational tools
to extend the usefulness of sequence data, and to accumulate
unprecedented quantities of new sequence data, BIONET would have
been an important center of activity and expertise. The end of
BIONET clearly sends the signal that NIH no longer supports such
a center. I believe that is the wrong direction for NIH to proceed,
and that the costs incurred by individual research grants to
replace BIONET services will exceed the cost of maintaining BIONET.
This is not a cost effective solution to the money crunch. To what
extent some of these services will exist as part of the human
genome sequencing project, is not yet known, but it seems likely
that such facilities, tightly coupled to the sequencing project,
will not be as generally available as BIONET. The loss to the
research community will be incalculable.
I urge you to reconsider the closing of BIONET, and to find
a creative solution to maintaining the services of BIONET for the
general scientific community.
Sincerely,
Ellis E. Golub
Associate Professor of Biochemistry
University of Pennsylvania
School of Dental Medicine
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6003
Phone: (215) 898-4629
Fax; (215) 898-3695
GOLUB@PENNDRLS (Bitnet)