Displaying Genomic Data
Central to the Ensembl concept is the ability to automatically generate graphical views of the alignment of genes and other genomic data against a reference genome. These are shown as data tracks, and individual tracks can be turned on and off, allowing the user to customise the display to suit their research interests. The interface also enables the user to zoom in to a region or move along the genome in either direction.
Other displays show data at varying levels of resolution, from whole karyotypes down to text-based representations of DNA and amino acid sequences, or present other types of display such as trees of similar genes (homologues) across a range of species. The graphics are complemented by tabular displays, and in many cases data can be exported directly from the page in a variety of standard file formats such as FASTA.
Externally produced data can also be added to the display, either via a DAS (Distributed Annotation System) server on the internet, or by uploading a suitable file in one of the supported formats, such as BAM, BED or PSL.
Graphics are generated using a suite of custom Perl modules based on GD, the standard Perl graphics display library.
Read more about this topic: Ensembl
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