Useful web sites for researchers studying proteins.

Abstract

The development of high performance computers both athardware and software levels associated with the exponentialgrowth of the Internet has opened new sources of information inall areas of knowledge (1). For biologists, the World Wide Web(WWW) today offers alternative information sources which aremuch easier to reach and unthinkable only a few years ago (2,3).In this Web, it is possible, for instance, to access libraries anddatabases, to engage in courses and discussion groups, and touse programs online (4), far beyond the electronic mail (e-mail), file transference protocol (ftp) and document retrievalsystem of the old days. Presently, technologies are explosivelybeing developed that will enable direct visual contact worldwide, both personal and in conference, and online discussion offiles and data. Programs already exist whose better perfor-mance still depends on the development of the Internet itself.In the present minireview we list the many Uniform Re-source Locators (URLs) organized in different areas such asImmunology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology andCrystallography, all of common interest to researchers dealingwith protein-related subjects. Similar lists were compiled forcell and tissue culture (5), human genetics (6), molecularbiology (7), thermocycling (8) and biotechnology companies(9).We organized the Web pages by subjects related to proteinresearch (Table 1), tools for online protein analysis (Table 2),organizations with useful references (Table 3), pages withannouncements of meetings and related courses (Table 4),scientific journals (Table 5), and some biotechnology compa-nies commonly consulted by the community (Table 6).As the Web continually expands, this directory does notintend by any means to be complete. We hope, however, that itwill be helpful as a starting point to look for and find usefulprotein-related information in the Web.