Terms of use

These terms govern the use of the OutCyte 3.0 web service. By submitting an analysis you accept them. A German version is also available; in the event of discrepancies the German version prevails.

1. What the service does

OutCyte 3.0 computes a statistical prediction of unconventional protein secretion from submitted protein sequences. It is provided free of charge as a demonstration with limited capacity. There is no entitlement to availability, to any particular turnaround time, or to retention of results.

2. Research use only — not for medical use

Predictions carry statistical uncertainty. No warranty is given as to their accuracy or completeness.

3. Warranty: no personal data

You represent and warrant that the data you submit

• contains no personal data within the meaning of Art. 4(1) GDPR, and in particular no genetic data (Art. 4(13) GDPR) and no health data (Art. 4(15) GDPR);
• contains nothing that makes a natural person identifiable, directly or indirectly — neither in the sequences themselves nor in the identifiers in the FASTA headers. Patient or case numbers, sample or biobank identifiers, names, initials, dates of birth and combinations of these are therefore not permitted;
• is free of third-party rights that would prevent processing, and that you are entitled to submit it.

Please note that a protein sequence carrying individual variants may allow inferences about a specific person. In such cases, please use the locally installable version of the tool, where your data never leaves your institution.

If you breach this warranty, you are obliged to notify the controller without delay so that the affected data can be deleted and any notification duties assessed.

4. Acceptable use

• Observe the applicable limits on file size, sequence count and length.
• Automated bulk querying, circumventing the rate limit, and any action that impairs operation are not permitted. Use the locally installable version for larger analyses.
• Do not use the service to break the law or to submit malicious content.

5. Licence and attribution

The OutCyte 3.0 source code is licensed under the MIT licence. The bundled model weights are licensed in two tiers:

• The Ankh-free ensemble ("open") is trained on MIT-licensed embeddings only and is likewise released under the MIT licence.
• The full ensemble ("full") includes a component trained on Ankh embeddings and is released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Using this service grants you no further rights in the software, the models or the training data.

If you use results produced by this service in a publication, please cite the data and code deposit at doi:10.5281/zenodo.21455774.

Non-commercial use of the full ensemble

Where this server serves the full ensemble, it uses the Ankh protein language model, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. In that case, use of this service and of the results it produces is permitted for non-commercial purposes only. An Ankh-free variant is available for commercial use.

6. Availability and deletion

Submitted files are deleted as soon as they have been read. You can also cancel and delete a submission yourself at any time, using the "Delete job and data" button on the status page. Results are deleted automatically 24 hours after completion. Save any results you need in good time; they cannot be restored. Operation may be limited or discontinued at any time without notice.

7. Liability

Liability is governed by statutory provisions. Liability is unlimited for damage arising from injury to life, body or health and in cases of intent or gross negligence. Otherwise, liability for a service provided free of charge is limited to intent and gross negligence to the extent permitted by law. Liability for decisions based on the predictions is excluded.

8. Data protection

Information on processing is set out in the privacy notice.

9. Changes

These terms may be amended. Each submission records the version you accepted. If the substance changes, the new version is presented to you for acceptance before your next submission.

10. Governing law

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies. This does not affect any mandatory consumer protection provisions of the country in which you have your habitual residence.