LocustDB: a relational database for the transcriptome and biology of the migratory locust (Locusta migratoria).
BACKGROUND
The migratory locust (Locusta migratoria) is an orthopteran pest and a representative member of hemimetabolous insects for biological studies. Its transcriptomic data provide invaluable information for molecular entomology and pave a way for the comparative research of other medically, agronomically, and ecologically relevant insects. We developed the first transcriptomic database of the locust (LocustDB), building necessary infrastructures to integrate, organize, and retrieve data that are either currently available or to be acquired in the future.


METHODS
LocustDB currently hosts 45,474 high-quality EST sequences from the locust, which were assembled into 12,161 unigenes. It, through user-friendly web interfaces, allows investigators to freely access sequence data, including homologous/orthologous sequences, functional annotations, and pathway analysis, based on conserved orthologous groups (COG), gene ontology (GO), protein domain (InterPro), and functional pathways (KEGG). It also provides information from comparative analysis based on data from the migratory locust and five other invertebrate species, including the silkworm, the honeybee, the fruitfly, the mosquito and the nematode. The website address of LocustDB is http://locustdb.genomics.org.cn/.


CONCLUSIONS
LocustDB starts with the first transcriptome information for an orthopteran and hemimetabolous insect and will be extended to provide a framework for incorporating in-coming genomic data of relevant insect groups and a workbench for cross-species comparative studies.
Ma
Zongyuan
Z
National Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China. mazongyuan@163.com
Yu
Jun
J
Kang
Le
L
D000818:Animals; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags / Q000737:chemistry; D049750:Genome, Insect; D023281:Genomics; D020407:Internet; D048188:Locusta migratoria / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D014584:User-Computer Interface