About Us
History and Overview
That sea urchins eggs and embryos have long remained a popular research subject for cell and developmental biologists is one rationale for sequencing the genome. In addition, studies of embryonic development in the California Purple Sea Urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus , have paralleled the emergence of molecular techniques ranging from the characterizatrion of genomic repeat sequences in the 1970's to the elucidation of gene regulatory networks in recent times.
The parent of this site, SUGP, was meant to provide a focal point for the exchange of genomic information as the genome of the Purple sea urchin was being sequenced. Over these past years it has served as a repository for small sequencing projects and a source of sequence information useful for gene discovery projects. Here one could find information on macro-array libraries of cDNAs from the purple sea urchin and genomic DNA from several species.
In addition, a Sequence Tag Connector (STC) collection has been assembled from 5% of the genome sequence and a very extensive repeat sequence catalog prepared. All of the sequence data that we maintained at SUGP was incorporated into the new SPBase. Of course, it is all in public sequence databases such as the National Center for Biological Information as well. Some additional sequence information is available at the Resource Center of the German Human Genome Project.
About The Web Site
The new web site, SpBase, is designed to present the results of the genome sequencing project for the purple sea urchin. THe sequences and annotations emerging from this effort are organized in a database that provides the research community access to those data not normally presented through NCBI and other large databases. Additionally, the unique information on that links gene identities and sequences to the plate and well location to the library filters from the Sea Urchin genome Resource will also be presented.
THe software used to organize and present the sea urchin genome comes from GMOD, a collection of open source software tools for creating and managing genome-scale biological databases.
The further development and maintenance of this site is funded by the NICHD, NCRR and the Beckman Institute..
People:
| Project Coordinator: | Andy Cameron | |
| Software: | Parul Kudtarkar, | Andy Cameron |
| Database/Web Design: | Parul Kudtarkar |