Enhanced Access to
Taxonomy Database

New Human-Mouse
Homology Map

Catch the Gene
Expression Omnibus

A Pair of Pathogens
Added to GenBank

Protein Molecular
Weight Field
Now in Entrez

OMIM In Entrez:
New Searching Power

Web Server
Software Available
for BLAST

Recent Publications

News Briefs

BLAST Lab

PSI-BLAST 2.1
Offers Composition
Based Statistics

Slight Address Change
for NCBI FTP Server

Masthead

	GenBank Gzipped for Ease of Transfer
GenBank releases and update files are now gzipped rather than Unix-compressed. The gzip format is similar to the common PC Zip format and delivers the greater degree of data compression required for the rapidly growing GenBank files. Gzipped files, which can be recognized by their extension of “gz”, can be unzipped using the PC, Unix, or Linux command: gunzip genbank_file.gz The gunzip program is freely available for the Unix, Linux, PC, and Macintosh platforms.
	LocusLink Adds Function Information via GeneRIF
LocusLink reports now display a link to a new tool called Gene References into Function, or GeneRIF. GeneRIF is designed to allow researchers to submit information about the functions of genes directly to LocusLink via the Web. Data submitted through GeneRIF must be accompanied by a reference to a publication in PubMed. The GeneRIF submission form contains a field for the PMID of the reference and a free-text field into which functional information about a gene can be entered. For more information about GeneRIF, see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/LocusLink/GeneRIFhelp.html.
	Mouse, Rat, Zebrafish Have Their Own Genomes Pages
New special genome resource pages, similar to those for human and Drosophila, have been implemented for three more model organisms; the rat, mouse, and zebrafish. Links to all genome resource pages can be found under the Genomic Biology link on NCBI’s home page.
	Entrez Displays dbEST, dbGSS Records
Searches of dbEST and dbGSS, can now be made using the Entrez search interface. This change allows searchers of dbEST or dbGSS to take advantage of the powerful Entrez Nucleotides search and formatting capabilities. Results are returned using the dbEST/dbGSS display formats, although other formats can be selected in the usual manner within Entrez Nucleotides. NCBI Conferences As part of our expanding efforts to provide hands-on education and training to users of our services, NCBI staff are available to answer questions and demonstrate our products at many scientific conferences throughout the year. In addition, we welcome users’ suggestions for upcoming meetings that might benefit from NCBI’s participation. Please send all comments and questions to info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. The following is NCBI’s upcoming exhibit schedule. Please feel free to stop by our booth with questions, comments, and suggestions on how to use and improve our services. American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) Houston, TX October 29-November 2, 2000 Computational Genomics Conference Baltimore, MD November 16-19, 2000 American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) San Francisco, CA December 9-13, 2000 BLAST Workshop: December 11 Microbial Genomes Conference Co-Sponsored by TIGR and ASM Monterey, CA January 28-31, 2001 New BLAST Web Tutorials Now Online A new suite of BLAST Web tutorials have been created to assist both new and veteran users of BLAST and PSI-BLAST. The three tutorials, entitled Query, BLAST, and PSI-BLAST, offer starting points for users with different backgrounds. A novice should start with the Query tutorial. More experienced users will want to work through the BLAST tutorial before proceeding to the more advanced PSI-BLAST tutorial. The BLAST tutorials, along with a variety of others, can be found under the Education link on the NCBI home page. You may also navigate directly to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Education/BLASTinfo/information3.html. BLAST 2.0.14 Released Standalone BLAST version 2.0.14 binaries are now available at ftp://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/executables/. The source code for BLAST 2.0.14 is available as part of the NCBI Toolbox found at ftp://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/toolbox/ncbi_tools/. Mouse Contig BLAST A new BLAST search form, patterned after the popular human genome BLAST search form, has been implemented for the mouse genome. Mouse genome BLAST can be reached via a link from the Mouse Genome Sequencing page. Like the human genome BLAST form, the mouse version offers blastn or tblastn searches of finished contig data and allows the restriction of searches to data from any or all chromosomes. Try mouse genome BLAST at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/seq/MmBlast.html.