Ensembl

From Freepedia

Ensembl is a bioinformatics research project aiming to "develop a software system which produces and maintains automatic annotation on selected eukaryotic genomes." (http://www.ensembl.org). It is run in a collaboration between the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), an outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). All data and all software that is produced in the project can be freely accessed and used.

Most of the software produced and used is written in the language Perl and is based on the BioPerl infrastructure. The Perl API can be easily employed in other genomic projects e.g. for the annotation of gene or clone lists. Also avilable is an API in Java.

The annotated genomes include most finnished vertebrates and selected model organisms, currently this includes:

• Chordates
  • Mammals: Human, Mouse, Rat, Chimp, Dog, Cow, Opossum (preliminary data)
  • Birds: Chicken
  • Fish: Takifugu rubripes (Fugu), Tetradodon nigroviridis, Danio rerio (Zebrafish)
  • Frog: Xenopus tropicalis
  • Ancient relatives: Ciona intestinalis
• Invertebrates
  • Insects: Anopheles gambiae (Mosqito), Honeybee, Drosophila melanogaster (Fruitfly)
  • Worm: Caenorhabditis elegans
• Yeast: Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker's yeast)

The service is used by molecular biologists and bioinforamticians around the world to compare local data with a common repository of current knowlege on genes and theoretical predictions of coding or controlling elements on the genomes of the above listed organisms. The comparison of organisms (comparative genomics or also intergenomics) with respect to their genomic structures and the coded proteins is of special interest and it supports Darwin's theories very much. Please inspect the synteny view, it makes also very good educational material for school classes. Ensembl is one of the finest pieces of Bioinformatics yet developed.