SWISS-PROT & PROSITE

                   IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

 It became obvious in the  last years that the tremendous increase  in data
 flow has created a requirement for resources which cannot be  addressed in
 full by  public funding.  This is  causing databases  to  fall behind  the
 research. We believe that the  only solution to the resource shortfall  is
 to ask commercial  users to participate  by paying a  license fee. No  fee
 will be charged to academic users, nor will any restriction  be imposed on
 their use or reuse of the data. both SWISS-PROT and  PROSITE are concerned
 by these changes while this is not the case of ENZYME.

 A document fully  describing what will  be the impact  of this change  for
 SWISS-PROT is  available with  the SWISS-PROT  distribution  files on  FTP
 (SP_98.TXT). You can also  access the document as  well as other  relevant
 ones from:

                       http://www.expasy.ch/announce/
                       http://www.ebi.ac.uk/news.html

 If you do  not have the  time to  read this document,  the most  important
 take-home message is that these changes should not have any  impact on the
 way SWISS-PROT or  PROSITE are accessed  or redistributed. Academic  users
 will not be affected by these changes. Industrial end-users will  also not
 directly be affected as long  as their employer pays the license  fee. The
 same  holds  true  for  bioinformatics  companies.  Academic  software  or
 database developers as well as providers of database distribution services
 will be only minimally affected  by these changes. We  hope to be able  to
 ensure their long-term financial survival.  We sincerely hope and  believe
 that in the next two  years the only change that  will matter will be  the
 increase in scope and timeliness of the databases.

 Finally, it should be noted  that release 36 of SWISS-PROT and  release 15
 of PROSITE are not concerned  by these changes. There are no  restrictions
 on their use and their distribution.