Funny name or unsublte hacker?

Question

[angus]

I was just paroosing the NCBI FTP site looking for a good way to get a taxonomic tree based on taxID's when I stubled upon "Prodigal hack" in genomes ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/ProdigalHack/

Seemed a bit odd, might make a virtual machine and go for a poke around in some spare time at some point, but was wondering if anyone knew what it is to save me the time?

[Arup Ghosh]

This https://github.com/hyattpd/Prodigal ?

Answer 1

[Istvan Albert]

prodigal is a well known tool for prokaryotic gene prediction.

but why is the main page have a genome called ProdigalHack? I'll send an email to [e-mail] and see what they say.

[Istvan Albert]

Amusing development in the story, I wrote to ncbi asking why that folder is there, 4 days later I got the following response:

Thank you for the report. I do not see a directory called ProdigalHack in https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/ Maybe we removed it? I have not heard of a problem like this. Write back if you are still seeing it there.

Sure enough, that folder is not there anymore...

[Arup Ghosh]

A mirrored version still available @ http://mirror.ufs.ac.za/genomes/ProdigalHack/

[angus]

And now the mirrored version is down..... the plot thickens! Edit; I have now conctacted the creator of Prodigal, currently awaiting reply

[Arup Ghosh]

I hope, they come up with a good explanation.