title: Some reflections on the early days of sequence searching.
abstract: Russell Doolittle is a biocomputing pioneer who was among the first to use computers in the 1960s to compare sequences. He contributed to the discovery of unforeseen sequence similarities, such as the relationship between v-src and v-mos. Doolittle's reflection demonstrates the enormous advances made in bioinformatics, soft- and hardware, and the concurrent explosion in data storage and acceleration of communication. Today's advanced technology was not available at the beginning of Doolittle's career, when no databases existed, and researchers knew by heart most of the sequences which had been published.
authors.affiliation: Center for Molecular Genetics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0634, USA.
authors.forename: R F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Doolittle
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000266:history; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000266:history; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins