TBrowse: an integrative genomics map of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is one of the major infectious diseases causing morbidity and mortality in the developing world. Genome-wide experiments on Mycobacterium tuberculosis particularly H37Rv and many other strains has revealed a wealth of information on the pathogen. This has been complemented by computational methods for the analysis of genomic sequence. This genome-level information is scattered in individual databases and supplementary material of publications and is not easily amenable to integrative analysis and visualization. TBrowse is an attempt to create a starting resource for integrative analysis of the M. tuberculosis genome. This comprehensive database contains more than half a million data-points of genomic data systematically culled from online resources and publications and is organized into hundred tracks. The resource is built based on the Generic Model Organism Database Genome Browser, thus making it readily interoperable with other genome browser installations. TBrowse is enabled with tools for programmatic data access and interoperability with other similar resources through Distributed Annotation System. In addition the resource is interfaced with sequence analysis servers maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the University of California Santa Cruz. The resource is available at http://tbrowse.osdd.net.