Internet Biomolecular Resources

✍ Scribed by Julia L. Cook

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 65 KB
• Volume: 268
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2697
• DOI: 10.1006/abio.1998.3088

✦ Synopsis

The Internet is a collection of thousands of computers that communicate through a specific software program or network protocol (TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). The Information Superhighway or World Wide Web (WWW) is a service or method of obtaining information from computers on the Internet. The Internet and WWW are central to the discipline of bioinformatics, the marriage between biotechnology and information technology. For our purposes, bioinformatics refers to the use of computers to support the study of biological systems. The availability of on-line DNA sequence information and programs for processing and comparing data is essential to molecular biologists, geneticists, clinical molecular diagnosticians, and clinical researchers employing molecular techniques. Sequence data are essential for the identification of genes and gene products, preparation of probes to study gene expression, design of PCR primers, and DNA fingerprint analyses. In addition, DNA sequence data are imperative for the creation of transgenic and knockout animals, identification of genetic mutations and naturally occurring polymorphisms, and mapping of genetic disorders.

In the past decade, the amount of material made available to molecular biologists through the Web has been enormous. The size of GenBank (the NIH genetic sequence database) has doubled every 18 -24 months for the past 10 years (1, 2). The following represents a compendium of some of the more useful sites including URLs (Uniform Resource Locators or "addresses"), descriptions, and tutorials. Designations and addresses of the major sites reviewed are summarized in Table .