The Legume Information System 2013

The mission of the Legume Information System (LIS) is to facilitate discoveries and crop improvement in the legumes, which are critical components of global food and agriculture systems. LIS stores datasets from numerous legumes through species-specific webpages, and uses the reference species Glycine max, Lotus japonicus, and Medicago truncatula as a basis for comparisons between and among diverse legume species. Numerous other genomes are being added as they become available. For other legume species, LIS hosts transcriptome assemblies (both traditional EST and NGS-based) and other datasets. Comparative maps, reference datasets, sequence search tools, etc. make these datasets available for exploration and discovery. New features in 2013 include powerful new sequence-search methods and interfaces; new genome browsers for chickpea, common bean, and pigeonpea; inferred syntenic relationships between all sequenced legume genomes; and a new database of trait and QTL data for bean and peanut. In the coming year, more data sets and trait data will be added, through collaborative projects with other species research communities. LIS is funded by the USDA-ARS, and is developed and maintained jointly by the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) and the USDA-ARS at Ames, Iowa. The team invites you to explore LIS at http://comparative-legumes.org and welcomes your comments and suggestions.