Genbank services?

[David Kristofferson]

SBAIRD at ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA (Stephen Baird) writes:

>Dear David Kristofferson,
>	I am a little unclear as to what services Genbank will be
>offering to the public after the end of September. I gather the
>FASTA, BLAST, BLAZE and RETRIEVE e-mail servers will no longer be
>available.  Instead of these servers, researchers will be able to
>use the NCBI BLAST and RETRIEVE e-mail server as well as the
>various FASTA e-mail servers from the University of Houston's
>gene-server, EMBL, and PIR. I don't think BLAZE will be available
>to anyone for free anymore.

You are correct in all of the above, although I am still not certain
when IG/MASPAR will stop free BLAZE access.  At this point one should
assume September 29th unless you hear otherwise.  I should add that
FASTA is also available by e-mail from EMBL.

>	What about data submission?  Will Genbank still be the main
>North American public repository?

Paul Gilna already answered the above regarding LANL's role.  I add
that IntelliGenetics will continue to distribute and support the
Authorin data submission program through March 1993.

> What about the FTP server and
>the Genbank database updates, will this be NCBI's responsibility?

Yes.  You can FTP to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov now.

>Are there other public services that Genbank offers that will no
>longer be available?

The free dial-up IRX account is the only thing that will disappear.
NCBI allows IRX-style queries by e-mail, and IG is going to charge for
interactive IRX access on its timesharing service.

I hasten to add that the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups will continue at
IntelliGenetics and SERC Daresbury without interruption.

				Sincerely,

				Dave Kristofferson
				GenBank Manager

				kristoff at genbank.bio.net