JLIPSICK@BIONET-20.BIO.NET (Joseph Lipsick) (07/12/89)
July 11, 1989 Dear Fellow Bionet Users, Needless to say, I am quite astounded and dismayed by the NIH decision to discontinue funding for BIONET. This resource has been invaluable to our laboratory for downloading sequences, for computer intensive sequence comparisons, for communications with other labs, and for distributing free PC software (Plasmid Paint). I must say that I am even more astounded that only tens of the reported thousands of subscribers of BIONET have responded to Dan Davison's request for user statements of support to be forwarded to him and to sympathetic ears at the NIH! Either people don't understand what a valuable resource they are losing (and will have to support with other vanishingly rare grant support) or they are incredibly complacent and too lazy to hit the keyboard for their own benefit. The fabled Silent Majority is apparently well represented in scientific politics as well. This is a rather sobering affirmation of the widely held view that scientists are their won worst advocates. Please prove me wrong and scream a little as beauracracy overtakes reason in ending support for Bionet due to a "lack of original research". Yours for vocal scientists, Joe Lipsick JLIPSICK -------
GVYAS.LANE@BIONET-20.BIO.NET (Philip Lane) (07/19/89)
Jim Cassatt
Project Officer
Genbank
Sir:
Dan Davison, at Los Alamos, suggested through a posting on the
Bionet "Bionet-News" bullitin Board that concerned Bionet users should
write to you to protest the impending closure of the Bionet resource.
This communication demonstrates one of the invaluable resources that
Bionet provides working molecular biologists like myself: by posting
a message on the net, one can contact a diverse variety of researchers,
many more than one might know personally. For example, I once needed
a fluorochrome-labelled dideoxynucleotide, but had no idea where to
locate such a reagent. I posted a message to the net and in 24 hours received
6 responses; three of them directed me to Dupont/NEN which (it so happens)
makes exactly what I need, even though it's not in their catalog yet.
As I see it, Bionet provides two invaluable services and one very useful
service. The bullitin boards and net communications services are invaluable,
increasingly so over time as more researchers use them, and CANNOT be
replaced. A bionet-type facility deserves to exist solely for this goal,
to increase communication among researchers. Secondly, Bionet provides
the most up-to-date access to Genbank DNA sequence databases and the
various other databases, along with database search capability. This
service is not duplicable in any one research laboratory without a
major investment in computer resources, an in any event onsite
database searching is only as current as the most recent database version
you've received, and Bionet is always four months or so faster than
any other update method. Genbank currently is 16 or 18 megabases, and
its doubling time, as DNA sequencing gets faster and as the human genome project
gets online, will probably rapidly drop from years to months. Even expensive
PCs can only handle 80 meg or so storage, and the increase in affordable PC
memory is sure to be vastly exceeded by the increase in Genbank size
over the coming years. Therefore, database searches which are only marginally
practical onsite currently will rapidly become wildly impractical unless
everyone buys a mainframe or unless a bionet-type facility is continued.
Finally, Bionet provides DNA and protein analysis software services.
It is true that this service can be duplicated onsite with a basic PC
and commercially available software packages, but those cost 5-10,000
dollars for the whole system plus software, and Bionet was $400/year,
so small labs REALLY depend on Bionet for these functions. I understand
the NIH funding was discontinued because "Bionet was not doing enough
research" ... I think its urgent to realize that it was providing
a series of services to researchers which aided to an exceptional
degree THEIR ability to perform research, and that this characteristic
(without ANY basic research performed directly by BIONET) is an
absolute justification for the continued existence of Bionet or
a bionet-like facility. I urge you to take all steps necessary
to refund bionet or to provide alternate bionet-like services to the
molecular biology research community.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Philip K. Lane, M.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Transfusion Research Program,
Department of Laboratory Medicine, UCSF
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