Apollo + i5K: Collaborative Curation and Interactive Analysis of Genomes

Precise elucidation of the many different biological features encoded in a genome requires a careful curation process that involves reviewing all available evidence to allow researchers to resolve discrepancies and validate automated gene models, protein alignments, and other biological elements. Genome annotation is an inherently collaborative task; researchers only rarely work in isolation, turning to colleagues for second opinions and insights from those with expertise in particular domains and gene families.

The i5k initiative seeks to sequence the genomes of 5,000 insect and related arthropod species. The selected species are known to be important to worldwide agriculture, food safety, medicine, and energy production as well as many used as models in biology, those most abundant in world ecosystems, and representatives in every branch of the insect phylogeny in an effort to better understand arthropod evolution and phylogeny. Because computational genome analysis remains an imperfect art, each of these new genomes sequenced will require visualization and curation.

Apollo is an instantaneous, collaborative, genome annotation editor, and the new JavaScript based version allows researchers real-time interactivity, breaking down large amounts of data into manageable portions to mobilize groups of researchers with shared interests. The i5K is a broad and inclusive effort that seeks to involve scientists from around the world in their genome curation process and Apollo is serving as the platform to empower this community. Here we offer details about this collaboration.