Section: Software

Magus: Collaborative Genome Annotation

Participants : David James Sherman [correspondant] , Pascal Durrens, Natalia Golenetskaya, Florian Lajus, Tiphaine Martin.

As part of our contribution the Génolevures Consortium, we have developed over the past few years an efficient set of tools for web-based collaborative annotation of eukaryote genomes. The Magus genome annotation system integrates genome sequences and sequences features, in silico analyses, and views of external data resources into a familiar user interface requiring only a Web navigator. Magus implements the annotation workflows and enforces curation standards to guarantee consistency and integrity. As a novel feature the system provides a workflow for simultaneous annotation of related genomes through the use of protein families identified by in silico analyses; this has resulted in a three-fold increase in curation speed, compared to one-at-a-time curation of individual genes. This allows us to maintain Génolevures standards of high-quality manual annotation while efficiently using the time of our volunteer curators.

Magus is built on: a standard sequence feature database, the Stein lab generic genome browser [61] , various biomedical ontologies (http://obo.sf.net ), and a web interface implementing a representational state transfer (REST) architecture [39] .

For more information see magus.gforge.inria.fr , the Magus Gforge web site. Magus is developed in an Inria Technology Development Action (ADT).