1. Our lab has been setting up a sequence analysis facility similar in size
to what has been discussed. We have managed to keep it fairly
cost-effective
by doing the following:
a) Our hardware is several macintoshes, and a SGI Personal Iris. This
gives
us basic sequence analysis and molecular modeling. The biggest expense
yearly is the maintenance contract on the iris ($1500/yr).
b) All our systems are connected to Internet. This allows us to use
network
resources for data analysis that would take a long time on the micros, ie.,
sequence homology searches. We use GopherApp for sequence retrieval
c) The network also connects us to a sun/4 at the UCLA automated
sequencing
facility. This computer has the Fast Data Finder board for extremely rapid
sequence search (10-15 secs for PIR). The software for the macs is by
Applied Biosystems. The same system also supplies us with rapid contig
assembly.
-Peter Markiewicz
