MMTDB - A METAZOA MITOCHONDRIAL-DNA VARIANTS DATABASE

The present paper describes the structure of MmtDB-a specialized datab ase designed to collect Metazoa mitochondrial DNA variants, Priority i n the data collection is given to the Metazoa species for which a larg e amount of variants is available, as it is the case for human variant s, Starting from the sequences available in the Nucleotide Sequence Da tabases, the redundant sequences are removed and new sequences from ot her sources are added, Value-added information are associated to each variant sequence, e.g. analysed region, experimental method, tissue an d cell lines, population data, sex, age, family code and information a bout the variation events (nucleotide position, involved gene, restric tion site's gain or loss), Cross-references are introduced to the EMBL Data Library, as well as an internal cross-referencing among MmtDB en tries according to their tissual, heteroplasmic, familiar and aplotypi cal correlation, MmtDB can be accessed through the World Wide Web at U RL http://WWW.ba.cnr.it/similar to areamt08/MmtDBWWW.htm.