dbd%benden@LANL.GOV (Dan Davison) (07/14/89)
The University of Houston Department of Biochemical and Biophysical Sciences
and the University Computing Center announce the availability of a
GENBANK-SERVER
This is a mail response facility which will return a specific GenBank
entry requested via e-mail. The server can be accessed on the
Internet, BITNET, and UUCP networks.
Please be aware that a mail response program is not "smart" and can
only respond to a limited set of commands. GenBank entries are
available by name and accession number only.
The address to use is
genbank-server@uhnix2.uh.edu (Internet)
or
...uhnix2!genbank-server (Usenet)
or
genbank-server%uhnix2.uh.edu@CUNYVM (BITNET)
and your request can consist of one of the following:
HELP
SEND HELP
SEND LOCUS genbank_locus_name
SEND INDEX index_name
SEND ACCESSION accession_number
"HELP" will result in a small help file being sent back, and everyone
should request the help message. It will contain up-to-date
information about the server, access, release numbers, and policies.
The help message also includes all index names, so "SEND INDEX" no
longer works. "SEND INDEX index_name" (where "index_name" is one of
the index files listed in the HELP message) will work.
SEND LOCUS genbank_locus_name will return via e-mail the requested locus
if it exists, and an error message if it does not. Use the HELP
message index file to find the name of the entry, or use the accession
number.
SEND ACCESSION accession_number will return the specified entry or a message
about not being able to find the entry if that accession number does not exist.
We hope to offer daily updates of the database beginning some time in the
fall. At that time, accession numbers of sequences appearing in journals
will be retrievable without knowing the official GenBank locus name.
Server Policies:
The server runs every half hour and will handle only *one* request at a
time. If you want more than one entry, send in separate requests.
Large GenBank entries (Lambda, EBV, tobacco and liverwort chloroplasts entries)
may not make it through the thread of mailers. UUCP mailers, in
particular, silently enforce a limit of 64,000 characters in a single
mail message. Note also that Usenet mail is very unreliable; you should
consult the "pathalias" database to construct a mail path from
your machine to uhnix2. A local Unix mail wizard may be able to help.
The server contains a simple response to someone asking for too many
loci or otherwise abusing the service: it stops working for them.
Please restrict your requests to no more than one or two a day; if
the demand is too great the service will randomly choose requests
to ignore, or will be stopped altogether.
The current version of GenBank on the server is Release 59. The
server is updated twice a year due to monetary and disk space
constraints. We will soon be updating the server daily; as entries
are completed by GenBank they will appear on the server.
Questions can be sent to davison@uh.edu (Internet) or DAVISON@UHOU(BITNET).
Requests to talk to a human rather than a mail response program should
be sent to archive-management@uhnix2.uh.edu. By popular demand,
archive-managment@uhnix2.uh.edu also works.