BIOSCI
Encyclopedia
BIOSCI, also known as Bionet, is a set of electronic communication forum used by life scientists around the world. It includes the Bionet Usenet
newsgroups and parallel e-mail lists, with public archives since 1992 at www.bio.net. BIOSCI/Bionet provides public, open access biology news and discussion for areas such as molecular biology methods and reagents, bioinformatics software and computational biology, toxicology, and several organism communities including yeast, C.elegans and annelida (worms), the plant arabidopsis, fruitfly, maize (corn), and others.
BIOSCI/Bionet was started as part of the GenBank
public biosequence database project by Intelligenetics at Stanford University
in the mid 1980s, in collaboration with Martin Bishop and Michael Ashburner
in the University of Cambridge
. It latter moved to the United Kingdom's
MRC Rosalind Franklin
Centre for Genomics Research (RFCGR). In 2005, with the closing of RFCGR, BIOSCI/Bionet moved to Indiana University Biology Department's IUBio Archive.
As one of the earliest bioinformatics
community projects on the Internet, GenBank
acquired the bio.net domain and the Usenet hierarchy of Bionet for promoting open access communications among bioscientists, in conjunction with public biology data distribution.
Michael Ashburner
, co-founder of BIOSCI with Dave Kristofferson of GenBank
(Intelligenetics), writes of its origins
The Usenet
hierarchy of Bionet.* includes bionet.announce (general biology announcements), and research communities of bionet.microbiology, bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, bionet.neuroscience, bionet.genome.arabidopsis, bionet.plants.education, bionet.drosophila, bionet.biology.computational plus 50 other active areas of discussion.
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroups and parallel e-mail lists, with public archives since 1992 at www.bio.net. BIOSCI/Bionet provides public, open access biology news and discussion for areas such as molecular biology methods and reagents, bioinformatics software and computational biology, toxicology, and several organism communities including yeast, C.elegans and annelida (worms), the plant arabidopsis, fruitfly, maize (corn), and others.
BIOSCI/Bionet was started as part of the GenBank
GenBank
The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence...
public biosequence database project by Intelligenetics at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in the mid 1980s, in collaboration with Martin Bishop and Michael Ashburner
Michael Ashburner
Michael Ashburner FRS is a biologist and emeritus Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He is also the former joint-head of the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory .Born in Sussex, England, Ashburner attended High Wycombe...
in the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. It latter moved to the United Kingdom's
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
MRC Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Elsie Franklin was a British biophysicist and X-ray crystallographer who made critical contributions to the understanding of the fine molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal and graphite...
Centre for Genomics Research (RFCGR). In 2005, with the closing of RFCGR, BIOSCI/Bionet moved to Indiana University Biology Department's IUBio Archive.
As one of the earliest bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
community projects on the Internet, GenBank
GenBank
The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence...
acquired the bio.net domain and the Usenet hierarchy of Bionet for promoting open access communications among bioscientists, in conjunction with public biology data distribution.
Michael Ashburner
Michael Ashburner
Michael Ashburner FRS is a biologist and emeritus Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He is also the former joint-head of the European Bioinformatics Institute of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory .Born in Sussex, England, Ashburner attended High Wycombe...
, co-founder of BIOSCI with Dave Kristofferson of GenBank
GenBank
The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. This database is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information as part of the International Nucleotide Sequence...
(Intelligenetics), writes of its origins
... in the early 1980s, Martin Bishop and I ran an email news service for a sequence analysis service that we ran on the Cambridge IBM3084Q mainframe. I was also a user of MOLGEN at Stanford, and there Dave Kristofferson ran an internal bulletin board using ANU News. We combined forces to start the Bulletin boards.
The Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
hierarchy of Bionet.* includes bionet.announce (general biology announcements), and research communities of bionet.microbiology, bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, bionet.neuroscience, bionet.genome.arabidopsis, bionet.plants.education, bionet.drosophila, bionet.biology.computational plus 50 other active areas of discussion.