January 15, 2016 (Vol. 36, No. 2)
URL:
http://www.gencodegenes.org
Rating:
Strong Points: Freely downloadable data
Weak Points: Inactive blog
Summary:
GENCODE is the recent expansion of the National Human Genome Research Institute’s ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) research consortium that seeks to continually improve the annotations of all gene-based features in both the human and mouse genomes. All data for current and previous genome releases are freely accessible and downloadable from the website in the form of GTF, GFF3, and FASTA files. Visitors to the website can view the statistics for the human and mouse genome releases (including information such as total number of genes, pseudogenes, and transcripts), as well as use the genome browser to view the data online. The homepage includes a link to the GENCODE blog, though the blog only contains a few entries. Site visitors can instead find additional general information about the project under the “about” section of the website.
