
%         Registration         SeqHoundRWeb.py: a Python-based interface to a 
%                               comprehensive online bioinformatics resource  
%                              Peter St. Onge (pete@seul.org)                 

In the post-genomic era, getting useful        
answers to challenging biological questions    
often demands significant expertise and        
resources not only to acquire the requisite    
biological data but also to manage it. The     
storage required to maintain a workable        
genomic or proteomic database is usually out   
of reach for most biologists. Some toolsets    
already exist to facilitate some aspects of    
data analysis, and others for access to        
particular data stores (e.g., NCBI Toolkit),    
but there is a substantial learning curve to   
these tools and installation is often          
non-trival. SeqHoundRWeb.py grew out of a      
common frustration in bioinformatics---the     
initiate bioinformaticist often has            
substantial biological knowledge, but little   
experience in computing; Python is often held  
up as a good first scripting language to       
learn, and in our experience new users can be  
productive fairly rapidly.                     



