Repbase: A Comprehensive Database of Eukaryotic Repeat Sequences and Transposons

Repbase Update (RU) is a comprehensive collection of representative repeat sequences in eukaryotic genomes. Since its first development as a database of human repetitive sequences in 1992, RU has been serving as a well-curated reference database fundamental for almost all eukaryotic genome sequence analyses. One main usage of RU is to mask repetitive sequences from the genome of interest with software such as Censor or RepeatMasker. Because most of the repetitive sequences originated from various transposons as well as integrated viruses, RU is also a fundamental source for the studies of transposons and their impact on the genome evolution.

One distinguished feature of Repbase is the detailed characterization/annotation of the repeat sequences that includes the classification into a particular transposon superfamily, the average identity/similarity of sequence copies to the consensus, and the reconstructed protein sequences that were originally encoded by their ancestral transposons.

These characteristics are published in Repbase Reports (RR), a monthly e-journal accompanying RU releases. RU and RR sincerely invite a broader submission of repeat sequences from the research community. RU and RR can be accessed on the website of the Genetic Information Research Institute at http://www.girinst.org/repbase/, and the tools and software, such as Censor, Repbase Submitter, and Visual Repbase, for analyzing, submitting, and visualizing repeat sequences in the genomes, are available at http://www.girinst.org/downloads/software/.