Mendel-ESTS: database of plant ESTs in dbEST annotated with gene family numbers and gene family names

The rapid expansion of gene sequencing has led to an exponential increase in the number of genes being deposited in the sequence databases. Associated with this is the proliferation of idiosyncratic gene names. The DE field descriptions in closely related sequences, whether they be from the same or different species, particularly in the EMBL and TrEMBL databases are often inconsistent and sometimes incorrect and misleading (Galperin and Koonin 1998). In an attempt to unify gene nomenclature and DE field descriptions, initially within the plants, two databases have been created: Mendel-GFDb (genes arranged into gene families) and Mendel-ESTS (plant EST and STS sequences related to genes in Mendel-GFDb by gene family numbers). The database web addresses are: Mendel-GFDb and Mendel-ESTS: http://www.mendel.ac.uk/ US Mirror: http://genome.cornell.edu/