Australia´s national genomic information system

The Australian National Genomic Information Service, ANGIS, is accessible over the Australian Academic and Research Network, Australia´s X.25 facility, and the switched telephone service. Three interfaces can be used: command driven, a CURSES based 2D menu system, and an X Windows system. Some 20 databases and over 400 applications are maintained. Sequence databases received as flat files are reduced to a common format and reindexed. They are updated either weekly or as often as new releases become available. The GenBank relational database is updated remotely from the Los Alamos National Laboratory daily and made available to users via a front end application. Analytical software consists of programs written in-house, and obtained elsewhere. The system was designed to integrate a disparate collection, modifications being made as required.