Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Centre Medical Universitaire, 1 Rue Michel Servet, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. swiss-prot@expasy.org
We describe some of the aspects of Swiss-Prot that make it unique, explain what are the developments we believe to be necessary for the database to continue to play its role as a focal point of protein knowledge, and provide advice pertinent to the development of high-quality knowledge resources on one aspect or the other of the life sciences.