Be alert: free sequence alerting services.

It has always been a challenge to keep up with all of the new data flowing into biological databases. Now, as the stream of DNA sequences from the Human Genome Project has increased to a torrent, the chances have drastically increased that something new has rendered obsolete the database searches that you did last week. You can spend lots of time obsessively repeating your searches or look for an automated service that will perform regular searches and send you notification when relevant new sequences have entered the database. There are also some free services that will check for new additions to the PubMed®/MEDLINE® database and notify you when relevant new journal articles appear.