Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!purdue!haven!uvaarpa!hudson!biochsn!wrp
From: wrp@biochsn.acc.Virginia.EDU (William R. Pearson)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: CD-ROM
Message-ID: <1868@hudson.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 19:55:16 GMT
Reply-To: wrp@biochsn (William R. Pearson)
Followup-To: bionet.general
Organization: University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Lines: 22


In article <CMM.0.88.618666497.lasky@NET.BIO.NET> lasky@NET.BIO.NET (Stephen Lasky) writes:
>Has anyone had any experience with the GENBANK or EMBL databases on CD's?

	EMBL is now distributing both its DNA sequence database and the
SWISS-PROT protein sequence database on a CD-ROM. I recently received
a test copy, plopped it into my CD-ROM reader (they now cost < $750),
and used it without a hitch.  GENBANK will be coming out on CD-ROM
as well; I don't know when.

	I have modified the FASTA program to work with the EMBL format
that is used on the EMBL CD-ROM (and also on their tapes).

	Be warned: CD-ROMs are slowwwwwww.  I can search the SWISS-PROT
sequence database in about 30 min from CD-ROM; when the database (15
Mbytes) is transfered to a hard disk it only takes about 6 min.  So it
will be fine for retrieving individual sequences, but not as useful
for sequence searches.

	Bill Pearson