Annotools

Vertebrate genome annotation is a core part of the Sanger Institute's work and has a dedicated team of 20 plus annotators with many years of experience. As the volume of genomic data has increased so the sophistication of our software has had to improve with graphical signposts, dynamic filtering and other techniques showing what's important. Annotools comprises programs written in C++ to be fast, efficient and offer a more complex interface than is really possible in a browser. They make good use of screen space supporting multiple screens, multiple windows and both vertical (maximum tracks) and horizontal (maximum sequence) display modes. The amount of data displayed is controllable via dynamic loading to the whole window or parts of the window, zooming thresholds and column compression. Transcripts and alignments are displayed with indications of co-linearity, non-canonical splice sites and missing sequence. Built-in tools allow searching features and sequence, comparing feature splice sites and configurable linking out to other data sources. The software can be run standalone or integrated into other systems via a remote control peer-to-peer communication system.