PSA Server form inputs

Description of form input fields

BMERC : psa-request : Submit request : Web form fields

The input fields that appear in the PSA Server analysis request form are described below.

This is the Internet format e-mail address to which all results will be sent, e.g. "researcher@darwin.bu.edu". If the address does not contain exactly one at-sign ("@") and at least one dot (".") after the at-sign, then it is not in Internet format and the server will reject it.

Furthermore, the server checks the host part of the address for validity by looking up its name. If this fails, it is usually due to misspelling the host name, or getting the name components in the wrong order, but it can also happen in rare cases when the psa-request server has temporary problems getting the appropriate network services. The request is still rejected because such problems will also prevent the server from returning results to the user, for as long as they persist. You should resubmit the request periodically, and if the host is still not found, send mail to Bob Rogers <rogers@darwin.bu.edu>.

Subject

The contents of this field are used in two ways:

As a label in the graphical results, and
As the subject of the headers in all e-mail results sent to you.

Therefore, the subject string should uniquely identify each request when you are submitting several requests. Since it will eventually find its way into PostScript graphics as a label for plots, there must be no embedded line breaks or ISO extension (e.g. umlauted or accented) characters. For best results, we recommend that you limit the string to 15 characters.

Analysis-assumptions

There are three choices, exactly one of which must be specified:

Monomeric-soluble

Comments

This is a free-form field in which you may place any comments you find appropriate. We suggest that you include your name, affiliation, city, voice-mail number, etc. These comments will be echoed on the e-mail acknowledgement message that is sent as soon as your request is enqueued, so it provides an opportunity to supply information about the sequence that can be archived along with the results.

Sequence

This field contains the amino acid sequence to be analyzed. Each amino acid in the sequence is represented by its usual one-letter code (e.g., A = alanine), from the set {a, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, y}; upper and lower case letters are equivalent. The sequence may contain up to 1000 amino acids. You may also include white space around and within the sequence. Unlike the e-mail interface, blank lines are ignored.

Only one sequence may be placed in this field. Multiple sequences placed in this field will be concatenated.

Plot format

Of the available plot formats, PostScript is the easiest to deal with; it is accepted by virtually every laser-printer made in recent history. If your mail reader is MIME-compliant, it may be able to print or preview the plots for you. The "Messages from the psa-request server" section has more information about the various plot formats, how to extract them from e-mail messages, and how to view them.

Return results via

There are two choices for this option:

return e-mail: This selects the traditional return mail delivery route, where an acknowledgement on receipt by the actual mail server is followed by a series of messages with the results when the analysis is complete.
private Web

Go to:

Please direct your questions and comments about these Web pages and the PSA e-mail server to:

Bob Rogers <rogers@darwin.bu.edu>
BioMolecular Engineering Research Center
Boston University, Boston Massachusetts

Last modified: Thu Jun 15 20:59:20 EDT 2000