Ensemble
Ensembl is a bioinformatics research project started in 1999 with the aim of “developing software that automatically creates and maintains notes on the eukaryotic genome ”. It is operated at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) on an outpost of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) with a team of around 90 people.
All data and the software generated in this project can be viewed and used by everyone. The upload as well as the download of data is possible. Most software is based on Perl and the BioPerl infrastructure.
A steadily growing number of vertebrate and model organism genomes can be viewed and searched. Amongst other things:
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Chorus dates
- Mammals: Human ( Homo sapiens ), chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ), rhesus monkey ( Macaca mulatta ), house mouse ( Mus musculus ), brown rat ( Rattus norvegicus ), domestic dog ( Canis familiaris ), cattle ( Bos taurus ), African elephant ( Loxodonta africana ) , Opossum ( Monodelphis domestica ), brown-breasted hedgehog ( Erinaceus europaeus ), domestic horse ( Equus caballus )
- Birds: domestic chicken ( Gallus gallus )
- Fish: Zebrafish ( Danio rerio ), Fugu ( Takifugu rubripes ), Green Puffer ( Tetraodon nigroviridis )
- Sea squirts: hose ascidia ( Ciona intestinalis ), Ciona savignyi
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Invertebrates
- Insects: Drosophila melanogaster , mosquito Anopheles gambiae , honey bee ( Apis mellifera )
- Roundworms: Caenorhabditis elegans
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Yeasts
- Brewer's yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae )
Data display
On the entry page of the individual species, the user will first find statistics, general information about the genome and news.
The gene map can be called up either by simply clicking on a chromosome section or by manually entering gene markers. There are four sections on the page:
- the complete chromosome with highlighted section that is viewed in detail
- Overview : An overview of any syntaines (the presence of chromosome regions with the same genes in the same arrangement in different species), genes and markers in the selected region
- Detailed View : Genes , mRNA , proteins etc. can be viewed here
- Basepair View : Display of the nucleotide sequence with its three possible reading frames and the resulting amino acid sequences
Search functions
- Keyword search : With Search Ensembl the user can e.g. B. search the provided genomes for genes, marker names, proteins, diseases or syndromes .
- BLAST : The BLAST search function enables a given nucleotide or protein sequence to be compared with the database.
- ExportView : ExportView finds gene regions by entering coordinates.
- Data mining (BioMart) : This tool enables a precise search for gene regions through a variety of filter settings.