From: ma11@mbud.bio.cam.ac.uk (Michael Ashburner)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: Flybase - Drosophila Database Changes
Date: 9 Jan 93 10:59:31 GMT
Distribution: bionet.general
Organization: U. of Cambridge, England


                              About FlyBase
From January 1 1993 major changes in the organisation of FlyBase on
the  IUBio  server  will  take  place.  These  are  introduced  in  this
document.

A consortium has been funded by the National Institutes of Health to
build  and  distribute  a  computer  database  for  Drosophila,  called
FlyBase.  The  consortium  is  Michael  Ashburner  in  Cambridge,  Bill
Gelbart in Harvard (who is the Principal Investigator), Thom Kaufman
and Kathy Matthews in Bloomington and John Merriam in Los Angeles.
The prime objective of the FlyBase consortium is to archive and make
available genetic and molecular data on Drosophila melanogaster. In
effect this database will continue the tradition of the RedBook (the
latest, and last, printed version of which, The Genome of Drosophila
melanogaster  by  Lindsley  and  Zimm  has  just  been  published  by
Academic  Press).  The  database  will  be  maintained  in  a  commercial
relational database format (SyBase) but will distributed in several
ways,  flat  files,  Sybase  format  and  in  an  interactive  computer
format using X-windows for Macs and Suns. In addition selected parts
of  the  tables  will  be  published  periodically  in  printed  form  as
special isssues of DIS (similar to the genetic map issue last year
as DIS 69).

The  project  will  proceed  in  three  phases.  The  first  will  be
realising and testing of the schema, as well as writing data input
protocols;  the  second  will  be  inputting  the  existing  information
(i.e.  that  now  published  in  Lindsley  and  Zimm  plus  Aashburner's
existing genetic data base and the existing bibliographic data) and
the third will be curation, i.e. inputting data from the literature
as it is published. There will, of course, be some overlap between
these stages.

Preliminary and working parts of FlyBase are available at the IUBio
archive  at  ftp.bio.indiana.edu.  Note  that  the  files  previously
available  on  FlyBase  have  been  reorganised  into  a  more  logical
structure  and  integrated  with  the  other  information  in  the  fly
directory of IUBio. This archive is best accessed via an Internet
Gopher client. Client software for Internet Gopher is available for
most  computer  systems.  Check  with  your  local  computer  network
experts, or use FTP (file transfer) to obtain Gopher software from
the  computer  at  boombox.micro.umn.edu,  in  /pub/gopher/,  or  from
ftp.bio.indiana.edu, in /util/gopher/. Most of this FlyBase working
archive  is  also  accessible  via  anonymous  FTP  from  IUBio,  in  the
folder /flybase/. The top level organization of this folder is:

flybase/redbook
 flybase/redbook/genes
 flybase/redbook/lethals
 flybase/redbook/aberrations
 flybase/redbook/miscellany
flybase/genes
flybase/aberrations
flybase/maps
flybase/function
flybase/clones
flybase/stocks
 flybase/stocks/stock-centers
 flybase/stocks/labs
flybase/references
flybase/miscellany
flybase/sequences
flybase/people
flybase/news
 flybase/news/news
 flybase/news/oldnews
 flybase/news/din
flybase/documents
flybase/working-papers
flybase/allied-data

Each of these directories (and some of the subdirectories) have a file
called flybase/*.doc - in which the contents of the directories and their
files are explained. In addition the entire documentation can be
obtained from the files flybase/documents/full.doc (in text format) or
flybase/documents/full-doc.ps (in Postscript format).

These working data are organized into broad areas of genes, maps and
allied data, Drosophila stocks, researcher addresses, and documents,
references and such. Expect this preliminary organization to change.
A complete description of the current files available from FlyBase
is available in the file flybase/documents/full.doc.

We welcome your comments and suggestions for building FlyBase.
You can send comments for all FlyBase consortium members to:
  flybase@nucleus.harvard.edu

You can send comments about the IUBio archive to:
  flybase@bio.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: bionet.general