On the usefulness of sequences in the databases

[Reinhard Doelz]

Colleagues, 
I have full sympathy in being eager to collect all and everything in 
the sequence data arena. Therefore, I currently compare GENBANK 77 vs. 
EMBL 35, and try to figure out the differences. Most can be explained,  
however, look at the following sequence: 

LOCUS       A00674          6 bp    DNA             PAT       29-JAN-1993
DEFINITION  Nucleotide sequence 3 from patent number WO8601533
ACCESSION   A00674
KEYWORDS    .
SOURCE      Unknown
  ORGANISM  Unknown
            Unclassified.
REFERENCE   1  (bases 1 to 6)
  AUTHORS   
  TITLE     'PRODUCTION OF CHIMERIC ANTIBODIES'
  JOURNAL   Patent: WO 8601533-A 3 13-MAR-1986;
  STANDARD  full automatic
BASE COUNT        3 a      2 c      0 g      1 t
ORIGIN      
        1 cactaa


I start to worry what the purpose of these sequences is. I am aware of the
fact that this is an extreme, but there are a couple of more, very short 
sequences. In particular, these 'patent' data are of more than doubtful 
quality. However, as both EMBL and GENBANK incorporate these, I need to 
explain to my customers what the need is to have a hexanucleotide 
in a sequence database, which occurs 28340 times in over 70000 sequences?


Regards
Reinhard 
  


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