Genome Sequence Databases: Annotation

Abstract

Modern microbial biology has been revolutionized by the impact of high-throughput genome sequencing. The dramatic improvement in sequencing technologies has increased the volume of genetic data produced. As a consequence, genome sequence repositories and databases worldwide have developed dramatically to incorporate these large volumes of sequence data. Database technology has enhanced and diversified these resources into more than mere sequence repositories. Not only their scope has extended into portals to house the treasury of information encoded in whole-genome microbial sequence projects, but also their function has diversified to incorporate extensive analytic tools to mine the encoded information. The variety of genome sequence databases in existence today provides tools to analyze genomes at the DNA, protein, and biological function level. The expansion of such sequence databases to incorporate gene annotation resources and pathway databases has empowered microbiologists to more fully explore microbial diversity and function. This has led to such information repositories becoming powerful in silico tools with which to leverage new discoveries in pathogenic mechanisms and gene discovery, for instance, as well as providing resources for metabolic strain engineering. Metagenomics, the DNA sequencing of noncultivatable environmental assemblages of organisms, is fueling additional interest and applicability of sequence databases.