Abstract

Publisher Summary Entrez is a biomedical information resource that has been designed to facilitate the discovery process by providing connections among biological sequences, molecular structures, and abstracts. Because it must be anticipated that the amount of data will continue to grow at phenomenal rates, the Internet would seem to be the most practical medium for the future dissemination of this information. However, besides these quantitative changes, several trends promise to alter qualitatively the nature of the nucleotide sequence database. It is necessary to be prepared for the expected volume of data, but changes to the Entrez user interface may also be needed to make effective use of it. For example, imagine finding a sequence of interest and asking for its sequence neighbors only to be presented with a complete chromosome sequence. A new graphical viewer in Entrez will allow the user to view the genomic landscape from different vantage points and make connections to the sequences, structures, and abstracts relevant to specific chromosomal regions.