SDSC Biology Workbench

The Biology WorkBench is a web-based tool for biologists. The WorkBench allows biologists to search many popular protein and nucleic acid sequence databases. Database searching is integrated with access to a wide variety of analysis and modeling tools, all within a point and click interface that eliminates file format compatibility problems.

First time users: please register for a free account.

Forgotten Pasword: we've noticed that most people that forget their password are actually using the incorrect user name. Our user names are case sensitive, so "JohnDoe", "johndoe", and "JOHNDOE" are all different names. If you still cannot log in, there are two ways you can get at your old data, once we verify you own the account in question. One option is for you to register for a new user name, and we can transfer the data from your old account to your new account once you mail us your old and new user names. The other option is for us to remove the password to your old account, which allows you to register for it again - your old data should show up once you log in again. Please mail bwbhelp@sdsc.edu and let us know which option you prefer.

The Biology Student Workbench group at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications has developed a number of lessons which use the Biology Workbench, as well as a How To tutorial. Also, we have written a Frequently Asked Questions document for our users, and a list of recent updates. If these documents do not help you with your problem, please send a message to bwbhelp@sdsc.edu .

Suggested Web Browser: the Biology Workbench was originally developed for Netscape Communicator or Navigator, up through version 4.7x. Microsoft Internet Explorer (especially older versions) can be unpredictable when loading the Biology Workbench, but the latest versions of Explorer seem to work fine. Because we are unable to force Internet Explorer to open seconary windows with our software, showing database records and reading help pages can be a bit clumsy. Nonetheless, most Biology Workbench operations *should* work within Internet Explorer, Firefox, or other popular browsers.

Some people notice browser-related problems that go away when one clears the disk cache, and turning off the disk cache altogether when using the Biology Workbench might be a good idea. Also, your memory cache should be set as high as comfortable, as some of our pages can take up quite a bit of space in your browser. We suggest a minimum value of 10 megabytes for your memory cache, if possible.

Structure Viewing: PDB structures can be viewed for PDBFinder records that are returned from a database search. One way to do this is to use the Rasmol program. The Chime plugin is another option for viewing structures on Windows and Macintosh machines, and we may eventually provide a Java-based structure viewer. For molecules with PDB structures, we also provide links to the PDB Structure Explorer page for that particule molecule, and to the Protein Explorer display for that particule molecule.

For more information on the research group that developed the Biology Workbench, please visit the home page for the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology group in the Deparment of Bioengineering at University of California, San Diego.

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SDSC Biology Workbench