The genome sequence database: towards an integrated functional genomics resource

During 1998 the primary focus of the Genome Sequence DataBase (GSDB; http:/ /www.ncgr.org.gsdb) located at the National Center for Genome Resources (NC GR) has been to improve data quality, improve data collections, and provide new methods and tools to access and analyze data. Data quality has been im proved by extensive curation of certain data fields necessary for maintaini ng data collections and for using certain tools. Data quality has also been increased by improvements to the suite of programs that import data from t he International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (IC), The Seque nce Tag Alignment and Consensus Knowledgebase (STACK), a database of human expressed gene sequences developed by the South African National Bioinforma tics Institute (SANBI), became available within the last year, allowing pub lic access to this valuable resource of expressed sequences. Data access wa s improved by the addition of the Sequence Viewer, a platform-independent g raphical viewer for GSDB sequence data. This toot has also been integrated with other searching and data retrieval tools. A BLAST homology search serv ice was also made available, allowing researchers to search all of the data , including the unique data, that are available from GSDB, These improvemen ts are designed to make GSDB more accessible to users, extend the rich sear ching capability already present in GSDB, and to facilitate the transition to an integrated system containing many different types of biological data.