From: kristoff@GENBANK.BIO.NET (Dave Kristofferson)
Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank
Subject: NCBI E-Mail Servers Now Available
Date: 12 Aug 92 21:26:49 GMT
Distribution: bionet


This has also appeared on bionet.announce and bionet.general - DK

----------------------------------------------------------------------

   E-Mail Searching of Sequence Databases at NCBI         8/12/92

   =================

   The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National
   Library of Medicine, is now providing e-mail server access for
   sequence similarity searching (BLAST) and for record retrieval
   from sequence databases.

   The BLAST e-mail server accepts either a DNA or amino acid query
   sequence in FASTA format, runs the search against a combined
   (non-redundant) or a single database, and returns the results in
   a mail message.

   The RETRIEVE e-mail server accepts single or multiple text strings
   (locus names, accession numbers, keywords, author names, etc.) as
   queries, runs an IRX search against a specified database, and
   returns the matching full record(s) as a mail message.

   =================

   To receive documentation on how to use the servers, send a mail
   message with the word 'help' in the body of the message to:

       BLAST server:          blast@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov        

       RETRIEVE server:       retrieve@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov     

   =================

   BLAST Databases:

              Peptide Sequence Databases
   
         Name                      Description
      ----------                  -------------
      nr                          Non-redundant protein database
                                  (selected automatically by blastp;
                                  includes SWISS-PROT, PIR, GenPept,
                                  and GenPept updates)
      swissprot                   SWISS-PROT protein database
      pir                         PIR protein database
      genpept                     GenPept (translated GenBank)
      gpupdate                    GenPept update (cumulative daily updates)
      tfd                         Transcription Factors Database
   
   
              Nucleotide Sequence Databases
   
         Name                      Description
      ----------                  -------------
      nr                          Non-redundant DNA database
                                  (selected automatically by blastn;
                                  includes GenBank, GenBank updates, 
                                  EMBL, and EMBL updates)
      genbank                     GenBank DNA sequence database (does not
                                  include updates)
      gbupdate                    GenBank update (cumulative daily updates)
      embl                        EMBL DNA sequence database (does not 
                                  include updates)
      emblu                       EMBL update (cumulative weekly updates)
      vector                      Vector subset of GenBank (LANL)
      dbest                       Database of Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs)
   
   =================
   
   For additional general information, send e-mail to: 'info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov'. 
   For specific information on the operation of the servers, not covered in
   the documentation, send e-mail to:  'blast-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov' or 
   'retrieve-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov'.

   Dennis Benson
   NCBI/NLM
   Bethesda, MD 20894
   benson@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
   (301) 496-2475