Gymno-PLAZA: An Access Point for Comparative Genomics in Conifer Species

Comparative sequence analysis has significantly altered our view on the complexity of genome organization and gene functions in different kingdoms. Gymno-PLAZA is designed to make comparative genomics data for conifers available through a user-friendly web interface. Structural and functional annotation, gene families, protein domains, phylogenetic trees, and detailed information about genome organization can easily be queried and visualized. The functional annotation has been updated and now comprises data from Gene Ontology, MapMan, UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, PlnTFDB and PlantTFDB. Furthermore, we included improved algorithms to transfer functional annotation from well-characterized plant genomes to other species. These data and features make gymno-PLAZA (http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/plaza/versions/gymno-plaza/) a versatile and comprehensible resource for users wanting to explore genome information to study different aspects of conifer biology, both in model and non-model organisms.