Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference

January 11-15, 2003
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Workshop: Bioinformatics - Genomic Computing Techniques and Applications
            

PLANT GENOME NETWORK: COMPARATIVE GENOMICS FROM THE GROUND UP

Cornell University, Departments of Plant Breeding and Plant Biology, 240 Emerson Hall, Ithaca NY, USA

Plant Genome Network (PGN: http://pgn.cornell.edu) is a site geared towards the processing, storage, annotation and analysis of sequence data in a comparative genomics context. The tools developed provide an automated but meticulous method of processing sequences from EST chromatograms to predicted aminoacid sequence for represented genes. The website and tools have been designed for the extraction of meaningful information from large amounts of data, allowing the biologist to ask the interesting questions and have the computer do the tedious work. User interface issues were a high priority during development, and the website interface is intuitive and easy to use. In addition to the data sets contained within the database, predicted genes can be assessed in terms of gene expression and homology against public data sets as well, and the comparisons are weighted based on the reliability of the data sources. To begin with, the database contains sequences from the tomato and potato sequencing projects (about 200,000 ESTs), sequences from the currently ongoing Floral Genome Project (projected 100,000 ESTs), and several other smaller EST projects (rose petals, eggplant, etc). The Plant Genome Network however encourages anybody to submit their sequences provided they meet a set of criteria, and is particularly helpful to smaller sequencing projects that do not have the budget or manpower to set up their own bioinformatics facilities.