December 1, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 21)
Rating:
Strong Points: Very useful database info
Weak Points: Problems with interface
Summary:
During the Watergate investigation, Deep Throat advised everyone that, to trace the problem to its source, one needed only to “follow the money.” When it comes to tracing the source of cellular responses to environmental influences, one can do almost as much by “following the transcription.” An easy way to do that online is by accessing the DoTS (Database of Transcribed Sequences) site, which contains a transcript index of human and mouse genes created from publicly available transcript sequences. This includes over 43,000 human and 78,000 mouse transcripts. Search options include Locus Link IDs and keyword queries. Options for Boolean searches and a history mode are also available. Though the interface is awkward for researchers, the availability of this information is welcome.