• http://research.nhgri.nih.gov/bic/ The breast information core (BIC) is an international collaborative effort whose main goal is to facilitate the detection and characterization of breast cancer susceptibility genes, and, particularly, to share and coordinate non-published information between like-minded researchers. The group has a steering committee (headed by David Goldgar of the International Association of Cancer Research) and has a general meeting every year, which is apparently announced via a newsletter, although there is no link to one or to details of the meetings on the web site.

To view any information, you must register, and with that completed you can click onto the BIC database — the core of the site — and see the mutations data for BRCA1 and BRCA2, which were last updated in August 2002. The databases can be searched by clicking on the exons themselves, or by using a form to search the genes. These data have also been summarized in several different ways for easier digestion — you can view graphs of missense or frameshift mutations, view a table of single nucleotide substitutions, or a bar graph of insertions and deletions. Importantly, there is also a mutation submission form where you can submit your findings — these data are examined and edited by the steering committee to maintain the quality of the data.

So, although extra sections such as published laboratory methods (which consists of just two papers published in 1997) and a discussion forum (the link did not work) are not that useful at present, the core of the site is comprehensive and well worth a visit for BRCA researchers.