GenColors: accelerated comparative analysis and annotation of prokaryotic genomes at various stages of completeness

Abstract

GenColors is a new web-based software/database system aimed at an improved and accelerated annotation of prokaryotic genomes, considering information on related genomes and making extensive use of genome comparison. It offers a seamless integration of data from ongoing sequencing projects and annotated genomic sequences obtained from GenBank. The genome comparison tools determine, for example, best-bidirectional hits, gene conservation, syntenies and gene core sets. Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL hits allow annotations in an effective manner. To further support the annotation base-specific quality data can also be displayed if available. With GenColors dedicated genome browsers containing a group of related genomes can be easily set up and maintained. It has been efficiently used for Borrelia garinii and is currently applied to various ongoing genome projects. Detailed information on GenColors is available at http://gencolors.imb-jena.de. Online usage of GenColors-based genome browsers is the preferred application mode. The system is also available upon request for local installation.