Colibri: a functional data base for the Escherichia coli genome

Several data libraries have been created to organize all the data obtained worldwide about the Escherichia coli genome. Because the known data now amount to more than 40% of the whole genome sequence, it has become necessary to organize the data in such a way that appropriate procedures can associate knowledge produced by experiments about each gene to its position on the chromosome and its relation to other relevant genes, for example. In addition, global properties of genes, affected by the introduction of new entries, should be present as appropriate description fields. A data base, implemented on Macintosh by using the data base management system 4th Dimension, is described. It is constructed around a core constituted by known contigs of E. coli sequences and links data collected in general libraries (unmodified) to data associated with evolving knowledge (with modifiable fields). Biologically significant results obtained through the coupling of appropriate procedures (learning or statistical data analysis) are presented. The data base is available through a 4th Dimension runtime and through FTP on Internet. It has been regularly updated and will be systematically linked to other E. coli data bases (M. Kroger, R. Wahl, G. Schachtel, and P. Rice, Nucleic Acids Res. 20(Suppl.):2119-2144, 1992; K. E. Rudd, W. Miller, C. Werner, J. Ostell, C. Tolstoshev, and S. G. Satterfield, Nucleic Acids Res. 19:637-647, 1991) in the near future.