Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!bionet!cunyvm.cuny.edu!c_rawlings%UK.AC.ICRF
From: c_rawlings%UK.AC.ICRF@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Chris Rawlings)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: Bionet shutdown
Message-ID: <8907111343.AA01890@biomedai.com>
Date: 11 Jul 89 13:43:11 GMT
Sender: daemon@NET.BIO.NET
Lines: 111


Dear Jim and Dan,

I would like to express my support for the continuation of the BIONET
service or an equivalent US national computing resource for molecular
biologists.

It seems somewhat  paradoxical that NIH should intend to remove all support
from BIONET at this time when they are increasing their support for
molecular biology computing on many other fronts (e.g. MBCRR, NLM etc).
Everyone seems to agree that developing better computational tools
for experimental molecular biologists is essential for the future success
of molecular genetics, in particular in view of the US committment to the
human (and other) genome projects.  Developing new software is one thing;
making sure that it is used by the people who need it is another.

The BIONET resource has provided a very valuable service to the
international molecular biology and bioinformatics community at a
critical time in its development.  That critical period is not yet over
and I believe there will be a continuing need for centralised services
such as BIONET until such time (if it ever comes) when we all have
high quality software and research biologists put a proportionate amount
of effort into understanding and using their computational tools as they
currently do into learning laboratory techniques.

The strengths of BIONET, and areas that I think should be considered for
continued support on a national level are:

Support for Occasional Users:
    It is to be expected (at the moment) that scientists whose major
    research interests come from their experimental science will be
    relatively infrequent users of computational analysis tools.
    Those of us who spend most, or all, of our working time
    at a computer terminal easily forget how difficult it is for
        occasional users to keep their (often patchy) knowledge of computing
        and software up to date.  I suspect that the stereotypical BIONET
    user falls into this category and needs and appreciates the level
        of user-support and documentation that has been provided.
    A centralised service with a committment to the occasional or
    novice user seems the most cost effective way of supporting large
        sections of todays molecular biology community.

Software Archive:
    A central software archive and the opportunity to try recently
    developed methods is a valuable service to both biocomputing
        specialists and the molecular biology research community in
        general.

Up-todate databases:
    There are still relatively few sites that have the resources to
        maintain fully up to date molecular sequence and structure databases.
    A centralised service provides a cost effective way to give easy access
    to the rapidly growing databases.

Specialist services:
    There will inevitably be services, software, databases or using
    specialist computer hardware that can only reasonably be offered
        by central resources.

Bulletin board and Electronic Community:
    Perhaps the hardest benefits to quantify, and the most difficult for
        outsiders to see are those that accrue through the sharing of
        experience and informal exchanges that occur in a community served
    by an electronic conferencing/bulletin board service.  The
    central role played by BIONET in the development of the BIOSCI
        bulletin boards has been essential in bringing these benefits to
    the biology community.

International Links:
    Many of us outside the US have found BIONET and more
    recently BIOSCI an essential link to colleagues in the US and
    I hope that this is reciprocated. The human genome (and
    other genome) projects *have* to be international
    and the demise of BIONET means a step backward for the
    mechanisms of realising these projects as "Laborartories without
    frontiers".



The need for support of all these issues have been recognised in the UK
and we now have a small-scale service (by BIONET standards) called
SEQNET funded centrally by the UK Science and Engineering Council.  The
rapid growth in the number of SEQNET users bears out the experience at
BIONET that there is a considerable need for such national resources by
the research community.  Plans are also being hatched in the CEC for a
European Bio-Informatics network linking national nodes such as SEQMET
that would provide many of the same types of service as BIONET does.

It seems then ironic that at a time when the rest of the world is at last
recognising the scientific and economic arguments for nationally coordinated
biocomputing resources, the US/NIH seems to undervalue the importance of
its own achievments and to underestimate the needs of its own molecular
biology research community.


The usual disclaimers apply; these are my personal opinions and should not
taken as the official views of  the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.


Regards


Chris Rawlings

===========================================================================
C.  Rawlings
Biomedical Computing Unit
Imperial Cancer Research Fund
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