Hi, I'm trying to access Ensembl's D. melanogaster dataset via biomaRt. This here works fine: mart <- useMart( "ensembl", dataset="hsapiens_gene_ensembl" ) This command here, however, causes the R process to hang: mart <- useMart( "ensembl", dataset="dmelanogaster_gene_ensembl" ) If I use Ensembl's web interface to Biomart, I can access both datasets just fine. Any idea what the reason might be, and how I could find out whether the fault is local or on the web server? Is there any way to let biomaRt be a bit more verbose with diagnostic messages? Cheers Simon > sessionInfo() R version 2.9.0 (2009-04-17) x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu locale: LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_COLLATE=en_GB .UTF-8;LC_MONETARY=C;LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_N AME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8;LC_IDENTI FICATION=C attached base packages: [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base other attached packages: [1] biomaRt_2.0.0 loaded via a namespace (and not attached): [1] RCurl_0.97-3 XML_2.3-0 +--- | Dr. Simon Anders, Dipl. Phys. | European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) | Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK | office phone +44-1223-492680, mobile phone +44-7505-841692 | preferred (permanent) e-mail: sanders at fs.tum.de