Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory Internet Conn

Mount Desert Island Biological Lab, Salisbury Cove ME

Investigators

Abstract

The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) is an independent, non-profit marine biomedical research laboratory which seeks to answer biomedical questions through basic biology, environmental toxicology and marine genomics. It is the home of the NIEHS Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Research (MFBS) Center for Membrane Toxicity Studies. Presently our internet connection is composed of individual dial-up service and 28K modems. The goal of this revised application is to request support for a high speed internet connection which would serve the following purposes: 1) To provide a conduit for bioinformatics data transfer to and from the five national MFBS Centers in a collaborative project, of which MDIBL is the lead institution. This funded project will establish a Marine and Freshwater Toxicology Genomics Database for use by the five centers. 2) To allow sufficient bandwidth for rapid uploading of large sequences of DNA, up to 1200 base pairs per sample, including Expressed Sequence Tags, generated by the Marine DNA Sequencing Center. These sequences are uploaded to scientists requesting sequence analysis and GenBank. 3) To enable access to large databases including the NLM Medline, GenBank, Swiss-Prot, and basic BLAST. 4) To establish high speed Internet connections to support website hosting and meet the Internet needs and email for scientists, students and the staff of MDIBL. We seek funds to install a T1 line for a period of one year, and acquisition and installation of other "pre-LAN" equipment to provide high speed Internet connections for above described crucial activities at MDIBL. The Laboratory is committed to providing the local area network necessary to complete the project and will also assume ongoing costs.