By the time you reach this page, you will already know enough about AAtDB to explore on your own. When you do you will quickly realize that we have not covered every feature or introduced every kind of information that is available. For example, we have not covered the Cosmid Grid display, or the fact that AAtDB contains an Image class that makes it possible to display scanned images of autoradiograms and photographs of mutant plants. We have barely discussed the Query tools, and not mentioned at all how to use the query language to get information from AAtDB on a simple, text-only terminal. Some of these topics are covered in documents available on the World Wide Web ACEDB documentation server at the USDA National Agricultural Library. But remember that "Help" is easily available in AAtDB and discusses all of these topics. Exploring them relies on the same pointing and clicking rules and actions you have already learned.

AAtDB Depends on You We would like to end our discussion by pointing out that the power of ACeDB depends on several features: ease of use, a graphical interface that emphasizes the mouse instead of typewritten commands, the ability to manage very large quantities of information, and the ability to make the associations between different facts obvious and accessible. But the utility of a database depends ultimately on the information contributed to it. The impact of the C. elegans database provides a model for what can happen when a community cooperates and pools its resources.

Much of what AAtDB now contains is derived from public data repositories, commercial databases, and gifts from a few laboratories (for example the physical map contributed by Brian Hauge was initially unpublished). Although this is a significant quantity of information it represents only a fraction of what is potentially available from Arabidopsis laboratories worldwide. We invite you to identify how your own data fits into the whole and to share those discoveries by contributing to the database and to the Arabidopsis community. Contact the Curator at the address below for more information and for assistance in preparing your data for submission.

• John Morris - curator@frodo.mgh.harvard.edu
• Howard M. Goodman
• Department of Molecular Biology
• Massachusetts General Hospital
• Boston, Massachusetts USA 02114
• FAX: 617-726-6893