February 15, 2014 (Vol. 34, No. 4)
URL:
Rating:
Strong Points: Many sequence databases and bioinformatics tools
Weak Points: None
Summary:
The website for the Blaxter lab at the University of Edinburgh—which is subtitled, “Nematode and Neglected Genomics”—is the perfect place to visit if you are searching for genetic information for “misfit” organisms of the current genomics era. You won’t find DNA sequence information for Drosophila melanogaster or Mus musculus here; instead, you can browse sequence databases for 63 species of nematodes, 1 tardigrade species (or “water bear”), 9 species of molluscs, and 2 axolotl species, among others. In addition to the multiple sequence databases, the website includes a number of downloadable bioinformatics tools. These include transcriptome analysis tools such as peptide predictors and sequence annotators; tools for phylogenomics analyses such as a taxonomy database manager; DNA barcode analysis tools; and general genomics tools such as quality assurance tools for next-gen sequencing datasets.