Microbial Genome Resources at NCBI
Speaker: Tatiana Tatusov
National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA
An ever increasing number of complete and unfinished microbial genomes are being submitted to the public databases. Proper genome analysis is of paramount importance in understanding genomic biology and in annotating genome sequences. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) provides a number of resources to analyze microbial genomes and proteomes. These include various databases housing the original data submissions, as well as explicit links connecting them. Pre-calculated results for various similarity searches such as sequence, domain, and structural, are stored to facilitate quick retrieval. Data from both the original submission and pre-calculated results are browsable and retrievable through the various web portals and displays available at NCBI and also through the FTP site or through the set of programs collectively known as E-Utilities. A set of interactive tools provides additional access to a number of pre-calculated similarity results that allow users to manipulate the results in a biologically meaningful way. All of these resources provide a rich set of tools for the analysis and understanding of genomic biology.