PALO ALTO, Calif.--Molecular Applications Group here said that in the second quarter of 1998 it will begin shipping a new bioinformatics product designed to enable researchers to work with public database information and algorithms in-house. Known as DiscoveryBase, the product will offer scientists such popular databases as GenBank, SwissProt, Prosite, PDB, and SCOP, as well as standard analysis engines required to perform homology and motif searches and predict protein secondary structure, according to the bioinformatics software company.
Myra Williams, Molecular Applications' president and CEO, noted that the new product "is targeted specifically at companies who are in the midst of expanding their bioinformatics effort and who still routinely perform sequence analysis over the World Wide Web." DiscoveryBase provides a method for such companies to utilize public domain resources with greater reliability and security than are otherwise available, she said. "Our challenge has been to bring public databases in-house for internal research programs in a way that eliminates the problems of public access without limiting researchers' range of options for most productive and creative use of this information," Williams concluded.