Arduous to use and filled with mostly unanalyzed data early on, these computer databases are now packed with valuable, up-to-date information made easily accessible with improved search engines. They have become so ubiquitous and integral to science today that almost every molecular biologist consults one when initiating research projects. "It would be impossible to do molecular biology properly these days without access to them. They are invaluable resources to the community," says Richard J. Roberts, chief U.S. editor of Nucleic Acids Research and coordinator of a database himself, called REBASE, a repository for restriction enzyme data.
It is now routine for scientists to submit new findings to the databases, sometimes even before publishing the information in a traditional journal. New data is integrated with the database's existing information, and in this way, molecular work is no longer interpreted just on its own but also as part of an organism's whole ...
