SeqHoundRWeb.py: a Python-based interface to a comprehensive online bioinformatics resource

In the post-genomic era, getting useful answers to challenging biological questions often demands significant expertise and resources not only to acquire the requisite biological data but also to manage it. The storage required to maintain a workable genomic or proteomic database is usually out of reach for most biologists. Some toolsets already exist to facilitate some aspects of data analysis, and others for access to particular data stores (e.g. NCBI Toolkit), but there is a substantial learning curve to these tools and installation is often non-trival. SeqHoundRWeb.py grew out of a common frustration in bioinformatics - The initiate bioinformaticist often has substantial biological knowledge, but little experience in computing; Python is often held up as a good first scripting language to learn, and in our experience new users can be productive fairly rapidly.