Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!uunet!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: consensus sequences, motifs, and patterns Message-ID: Date: 7 Feb 91 18:46:16 GMT References: <9102071611.AA03799@genbank.bio.net> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 26 Michael, What you are describing fits in with the "boutique" database concept that would be layered upon the Geninfo backbone database which NCBI is advocating. This plan makes a lot of sense as long as the integration is well thought out and executed properly. It might be helpful if someone at NCBI would elaborate on their plans so that the scientific community would get a better idea of what is planned for the future. Given the tempest that we had about the rather small GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ features table change which caught some people by surprise, it would seem make sense to alert people in advance. To date, this information about NCBI's plans has been distributed primarily through a developers meeting last July in Bethesda and via a rather infrequently used mailing list at NLM. I will also note that at a recent meeting which I attended in DC it was apparent that even some of the people who **should** be informed about these issues were not up to date on developments. This seems to make a clear case that a better PR job is needed here. Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net