Prometheus: Omics Portal for Comparative Genomics

Since NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) technology were developed in mid 2000s, the huge amount of genome information has been generated and analyzed. Studies of reference genomes were contributed to unveiling biological responses, cloning of interested genes, molecular marker development, and development of new medicine. As number of sequenced genomes were increased, a lot of tools or pipelines were developed to identify the gene function or gene families such as InterPro, Pfam, SignalP, PSortII, ChloroP, TMHMM2, and NetPhos. Furthermore, rapidly increasing - genome information have been a major reason for spurring - genome wide functional studies of genes of interest or gene families through comparative genomics. Although many web-based platforms for comparative genomics were developed, application of those platforms were limited as they allow only small numbers of genome or tools. The web-based comparative genomics platform for large amount of genome information and various tools is desirable for comprehensive genome wide gene family studies or functional studies for interested genes as well as their evolutionary studies. Here we present Prometheus, the omics portal for comparative genomics. The Prometheus is a web-based and cloud computing-based comparative genomics platform and contains more than 30,000 of genome information from prokaryotic to eukaryotic genome with 3 primary and 20 secondary database generated from various analysis such as InterPro, TargetP, and OrthoMCL. In addition, the system of My Genes in the Prometheus gives chance to analyze interested genes with various tools or Chlosha, cloud-based analysis pipeline in the Prometheus as well as Chlosha II, a version for advanced users to allow customized analysis pipeline. Furthermore, assembly and annotation pipeline for genome or transcriptome will be added in the Prometheus in the near future.