Dear Diarmaid,
Thank you for your response to StrainMan 1.0. I recognize the customary
tradition in microbiology of listing all of the strain's markers of a
paticular strain in a string appearance. However, that approach may appear
to be straight forward, but this is not useful for a laboratory that needs
to enter over 4,000 strain records into a database and then find a strain
with specific characteristics. Please keep in mind that StrainMan was
designed as a fully relational database in order to limit the time for
data entry required when creating strain records. For example, if users do
not find the gene they want from the gene list to describe a strian, then
they only have to add the specific gene to the gene list once. Thereafter,
they may pick that gene from the list when creating new or modifying old
strain records. This logic makes StrainMan useful so that when you attach
a transposon to a gene of a strain, StrainMan automatically updates the
mutant gene list and the antibiotic resistance related to that transposon
to antibiotic resistance list of a strain record. StrainMan's logic
significantly reduces the time needed to create strain records when at the
same time most detailed information about a gene, plasmid, or transposon
is redundant. In addition, this approach provides a logical search
criteria for strains in a laboratory collection using Boolean logic.
I will discuss your comments regarding StrainMan 1.0 with the development
team at Caesar Software and let you know the results of these upcoming
talks. I would like very much to address your needs regarding StrainMan.
Please feel free to comment to this reply and thank you very much for
evaluating StrainMan.
Sincerely,
Robert Negm, PhD
Scientific Advisor,
Caesar Software LLC
negm at caesarsoftware.comhttp://caesarsoftware.com
Subject: genotype
From: Diarmaid Hughes
Category: Question
Date: 6/18/98
Time: 8:30:47 AM
I am looking for a good programme for managing my strain collection. A
problem I have with your
new StrainMan 1.0 programme is that it does not present a strain genotype
as a simple linear string
of words (the way we would nornally write it in a strain list for
example). This may be my
ignorance of your programme (I have tried the demo) but it puts me off
buying the product. I also
want freedon to write in my new strains as a linear list of genes (not
have to choose each one from
your list) with the freedom to write what I like on a single line per
strain. I have previous experience
of StrainFinder (unfortunately just available for Macintosh) and found it
much better (more intuitive
and suited to the needs of a microbiologist).
Robert Negm wrote:
> Hello,
>> I am eager to receive feedback regarding our microbial database, called
> StrainMan 1.0, from www.caesarsoftware.com. Can you please post your
> comments about our database on our on-line forum at
>http://www.caesarsoftware.com/forum_frm.htm. Feel free to post any
> gripes, praise, or constructive criticisms. At Caesar Software, we are
> trying to make the best microbial database ever developed. Thanks again
> for everyone's support.
>> Sincerely,
>> Robert Negm, PhD
> Scientific Advisor,
> Caesar Software LLC
>negm at caesarsoftware.com>http://caesarsoftware.com
