Poster #RP111
MicroScope : A platform for the (re)annotation and comparative analysis of microbial genomes.
Claudine MEDIGUE*, David VALLENET**, Stéphane CRUVEILLER**, Zoé ROUY**, Aurélie LAJUS**, Grégory SAVIGNOL**, Claude SCARPELLI**
*GENOSCOPE / CNRS-UMR8030; **GENOSCOPE
Located at Genoscope, our bioinformatic team has developed the MicroScope platform to support microbial genomes (re)annotation projects and comparative analysis (http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/agc/microscope). It is made of three major components (Vallenet et al., NAR, 2006, 34:53-65): (i) a wide range of syntactic and functional annotation tools, (ii) a relational database, Prokaryotic Genome DataBase, (PkGDB) which is linked to metabolic pathway databases (http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/agc/microcyc) and (iii) a graphically oriented web interface, Magnifying Genome (MaGe), which allows to perform relevant expert annotation (combinaison of synteny results and metabolic pathways prediction). A thematic database includes newly sequenced genomes together with related chromosomes/plasmids (finished or not) for which a complete automatic annotation, including synteny groups computation with available microbial proteomes, is performed. The data is made available through advanced graphical web interfaces for manual refinement of the automatic assignment of gene products, and for the exploration of the annotation data and the comparative analysis results. In this context, several new functionalities of the MaGe's interfaces will be presented.
The platform is used as a viewer in order to browse updated annotation information, and in the context of new annotation projects (28 projects to date, http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/agc/mage). Expert annotations gathered in PkGDB contribute to improve the quality of bacterial annotations.