Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X ConferenceJanuary 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Bioinformatics: Databases
Computer: Poster and Demo
ESTIMA (EST Information Management and Annotation Tool) is an extensible bioinformatics resource that interfaces an annotated EST database with a suite of search tools that permits the user to rapidly access and utilize functional annotation of ESTs from any source. We have currently implemented ESTIMA with local cattle placenta (http://keck1.biotec.uiuc.edu/cattle/cattle_project.htm) and honey bee brain (http://keck1.biotec.uiuc.edu/bee/honeybee_project.htm) EST databases, with the potential for other model organism EST databases to be included in the near future. Every sequence in the database is quality- and vector-trimmed, annotated with detailed information arising from CAP3 clustering, similarity search against the human UniGene database for cattle and against FlyBase for the honey bee, and associated with the Gene Ontology (GO) controlled vocabulary for functional annotation. The ESTIMA tool permits clusters to be viewed using an in-house contig viewer, allows users to BLAST their sequences locally against private and public domain databases, query by any attribute of a sequence or cluster including keywords, and allows sequence and chromatogram retrieval. A static GO term tree for any GO term can be navigated and annotated ESTs for that term retrieved. The linkages and associations with GO and LocusLink provide an excellent resource to explore orthologous relationships and to begin the process of defining complex phenotypes at the molecular level.