Functional and structural genomics using PEDANT.
BACKGROUND
Enormous demand for fast and accurate analysis of biological sequences is fuelled by the pace of genome analysis efforts. There is also an acute need in reliable up-to-date genomic databases integrating both functional and structural information. Here we describe the current status of the PEDANT software system for high-throughput analysis of large biological sequence sets and the genome analysis server associated with it.


RESULTS
The principal features of PEDANT are: (i) completely automatic processing of data using a wide range of bioinformatics methods, (ii) manual refinement of annotation, (iii) automatic and manual assignment of gene products to a number of functional and structural categories, (iv) extensive hyperlinked protein reports, and (v) advanced DNA and protein viewers. The system is easily extensible and allows to include custom methods, databases, and categories with minimal or no programming effort. PEDANT is actively used as a collaborative environment to support several on-going genome sequencing projects. The main purpose of the PEDANT genome database is to quickly disseminate well-organized information on completely sequenced and unfinished genomes. It currently includes 80 genomic sequences and in many cases serves as the only source of exhaustive information on a given genome. The database also acts as a vehicle for a number of research projects in bioinformatics. Using SQL queries, it is possible to correlate a large variety of pre-computed properties of gene products encoded in complete genomes with each other and compare them with data sets of special scientific interest. In particular, the availability of structural predictions for over 300 000 genomic proteins makes PEDANT the most extensive structural genomics resource available on the web.
GSF-Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences, Martinsried, Germany. frishman@mips.biochem.mpg.de
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Frishman
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Albermann
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Hani
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Heumann
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Metanomski
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Zollner
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Mewes
D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics; D018834:Chaperonin 60 / Q000378:metabolism; D019295:Computational Biology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D016681:Genome, Fungal; D023281:Genomics; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012984:Software
D018834:Chaperonin 60; D011506:Proteins