Molecular Biology Database

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) maintains a repository of molecular biology databases and software development tools that are publicly available for network users through Internet File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The available directories include "repository", "toolbox" and "pub".

The repository directory holds over 20 databases such as: SWISS-PROT (A. Baircoch); ACeDB: AC. elegans Database (J. Thierry-Mieg, R. Durbin); FlyBase (M. Ashburner); Eukaryotic Promoter Database (P. Bucher); Restriction Enzyme Database (R. Roberts); Transcription Factors Database (D. Ghosh); and CarbBank/CCSD.

The toolbox directory contains a set of software and data exchange specifications that are used by NCBI to produce portable software and includes ASN.1 tools and specifications for molecular sequence data.

The pub directory offers public domain software, such as BLAST (a sequence similarity search program) and MACAW (a multiple sequence alignment program).

All data in these directories can be transferred through Internet by using the Anonymous FTP program. To connect, type: ftp ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or ftp 130.14.25.1. Enter anonymous for the login name and enter your e-mail address as the password. Change directories to "repository" to download databases (cd repository), "toolbox" to download ASN.1 tools (cd toolbox), or "pub" to download public-domain software (cd pub).