MIPS: a database for genomes and protein sequences

The Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS-GSF), Martinsried, near Munich, Germany, continues its longstanding tradition to develop and maintain high quality curated genome databases. In addition, efforts have been intensified to cover the wealth of complete genome sequences in a systematic, comprehensive form. Bioinformatics, supporting national as well as European sequencing and functional analysis projects, has resulted in several up-to-date genome-oriented databases. This report describes growing databases reflecting the progress of sequencing the Arabidopsis thaliana (MATDB) and Neurospora crassa genomes (MNCDB), the yeast genome database (MYGD) extended by functional analysis data, the database of annotated human EST-clusters (HIB) and the database of the complete cDNA sequences from the DHGP (German Human Genome Project). It also contains information on the up-to-date database of complete genomes (PEDANT), the classification of protein sequences (ProtFam) and the collection of protein sequence data within the framework of the PIR-International Protein Sequence Database. These databases can be accessed through the MIPS WWW server (http://www. mips.biochem.mpg.de ).