title: Web resources for model organism studies.
abstract: An ever-growing number of resources on model organisms have emerged with the continued development of sequencing technologies. In this paper, we review 13 databases of model organisms, most of which are reported by the National Institutes of Health of the United States (NIH; http://www.nih.gov/science/models/). We provide a brief description for each database, as well as detail its data source and types, functions, tools, and availability of access. In addition, we also provide a quality assessment about these databases. Significantly, the organism databases instituted in the early 1990s--such as the Mouse Genome Database (MGD), Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD), and FlyBase--have developed into what are now comprehensive, core authority resources. Furthermore, all of the databases mentioned here update continually according to user feedback and with advancing technologies.
authors.affiliation: Core Genomic Facility, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Bixia
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Core Genomic Facility, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Yanqing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Core Genomic Facility, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
authors.forename: Junwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Core Genomic Facility, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: zhaowm@big.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Wenming
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhao
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D051379:Mice
keywords: Bioinformatics; Biology; Database; Genome; Model organism