Hymenoptera Genome Database: Resources for Annotating and Comparing Hymenopteran Insect Genomes

The Hymenoptera Genome Database (HGD; http://HymenopteraGenome.org) supports genome informatics for hymenoptera insects. It currently includes genomes of three Apis species (A. mellifera, A. florea, A. dorsata), two bumble bee species (Bombus impatiens, B. terrestris), seven ant species (Acromyrmex echinatior, Atta cephalotes, Camponotus floridanus, Harpegnathos saltator, Linepithema humile, Pogonomyrmex barbatus, and Solenopsis invicta) and parasitoid jewel wasp (Nasonia vitripennis). Looking forward to the i5K initiative (5000 insect genomes), we aim to support many more hymenoptera genomes in the near future. Combining data for these species, whose phylogeny spans 200 million years, greatly facilitates comparative genomics. We provide tools for sequence comparison, genome browsing and annotation. Users may access the data via genome browsers (Gbrowse and Jbrowse), BLAST searching and large file download. Datasets include genome assemblies, computed and manually-annotated genes, protein homologs, non-coding RNA, genetic markers, transcriptome sequence assemblies and expression data. We compute orthologs, and use them to provide links across species. We also develop computational gene prediction strategies that leverage sequence conservation and consensus approaches. We have recently created a new A. mellifera Official Gene Set, based on the newest A. mellifera assembly (Amel_4.5). We have also performed computational annotation for the two Bombus genomes. We are currently supporting community manual annotation for Amel_4.5 and the two Bombus assemblies (Bombus terrestris assembly Bter_1.0 and Bombus impatiens assembly Bimp_2.0) using Apollo deployed with Java WebStart, and have started to transition our annotation services to leverage the newest annotation software, WebApollo.