-----Forwarded Message----- Correction: The date for the change will be 12/24 not 11/15 as previously announced. [BLAST-Announce #037]: FASTA file compression format to change from .Z to .gz. The FASTA BLAST Database files maintained at NCBI (ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast/db/FASTA) are currently archived using the program "compress", and appear with the ".Z" file extension. In keeping with the majority of FTP files at NCBI we will be migrating these files to the GZIP compression format which has a ".gz" extension. The GZIP compression format is more efficient and take sup less disk space. GZIP format is supported by several platforms, on UNIX and PC as well as Mac OS X. PC: several standard windows unarchiving software Unix: gunzip (standard for most OS, otherwise see your systems admin) MAC: Unstuffit Expander The .Z files will continue to be available for two months before being removed on 12/24/2003. If you have any questions and/or concerns please contact us at blast-help at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Scalable Informatics LLC, email: landman at scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com phone: +1 734 612 4615