FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE



1'000'000'000 connections to the ExPASy server!

Geneva, Switzerland - May, 2007. The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)
is proud to announce that its famous ExPASy proteomics Website (www.expasy.org)
has recently reached the mark of 1 billion connections. ExPASy is an essential
resource for biologists and medical researchers from all over the world. It is
a portal for information on proteins. It is known for having been for many years
the 'home' of Swiss-Prot, the world-renown protein database, as well as of many
other valuable proteomics tools and databases.

ExPASy started to operate in August 1993. It was the beginning of the World Wide
Web and no more than a couple hundred Websites were in operation in these early
days. ExPASy was the first server in the life sciences. In its first month of
operation it was visited 7'300 times. Now, it is currently visited by an average
of 13 persons per second, which corresponds to about 33 million connections per
month. This means that during the time it takes to read this press release there
will be more connections made on ExPASy than in its first month of operation. A
cumulative total of 1.7 million different computers from 218 different countries
have connected to the server over its now more than 13 years of existence.

ExPASy is continuously updated and improved so as to cater to the evolving needs
of the scientific research community. It allows its users to access a variety of
databases and software tools which are essential to the studies of the proteins
- a discipline called proteomics. These databases include UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot -
which can be considered as an encyclopaedia on proteins and is without doubt the
most comprehensive one - as well as PROSITE (a database of protein domains and
families), SWISS-2DPAGE (a database of two-dimensional gel images), SWISS-MODEL
(a repository of protein models) and ENZYME (a repository of information on the
nomenclature of enzymes).

The ExPASy site also gives access to many software tools. The most significant
ones being programs that were specifically developed to help in the identification
of proteins using techniques such as mass spectrometry and 2D gel separation. Most
tools and databases are provided free of charge to the community. The server is
also known for its continuous efforts in providing educational material. It recently
opened access to e-Proxemis, an on-line resource to help scientists to make use of
bioinformatics tools and databases in the field of proteomics.

"It is with great pleasure that I congratulate the team that set up and maintained
the ExPASy Website for the last 13 years", said Prof. Ernest Feytmans, Director of
the SIB. "The SIB is proud to host this precious resource and thus to contribute to
life science research world-wide".

The server, located at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, as well as its
mirror sites in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China and Korea, are maintained by a
multidisciplinary team of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. The mirror sites
address the network congestion problems that are caused by an ever-increasing number
of connections to ExPASy and its world-wide success. By giving access to
strategically located mirrors, ExPASy maintains both quality of access and speed
wherever the user may be located.

About the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)
The SIB is an academic not-for-profit foundation established on March 30, 1998
whose mission is to promote research, the development of databanks and computer
technologies, teaching and service activities in the field of bioinformatics, in
Switzerland with international collaborations. For more information about the SIB,
please visit: www.isb-sib.ch.

ExPASy contact:
Christine Hoogland
Christine.Hoogland@isb-sib.ch
Tel. +41 22 379 58 28
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