The Ensembl genome database project

T Hubbard

D Barker

E Birney

G Cameron

V Curwen+26 authors

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and ^{European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL–EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire CB10 1SA, UK}

^{To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +44 1223 494420; Fax: +44 1223 494468; Email: birney@ebi.ac.uk}

Received 2001 Aug 20; Revised 2001 Oct 31; Accepted 2001 Oct 31.

Abstract

The Ensembl (http://www.ensembl.org/) database project provides a bioinformatics framework to organise biology around the sequences of large genomes. It is a comprehensive source of stable automatic annotation of the human genome sequence, with confirmed gene predictions that have been integrated with external data sources, and is available as either an interactive web site or as flat files. It is also an open source software engineering project to develop a portable system able to handle very large genomes and associated requirements from sequence analysis to data storage and visualisation. The Ensembl site is one of the leading sources of human genome sequence annotation and provided much of the analysis for publication by the international human genome project of the draft genome. The Ensembl system is being installed around the world in both companies and academic sites on machines ranging from supercomputers to laptops.

Abstract

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to users of our web site and the developers on our mailing lists for much useful feedback and discussion. The Ensembl project is principally funded by the Wellcome Trust with additional funding from EMBL.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES

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