November 15, 2005 (Vol. 25, No. 20)

URL:
http://143.225.208.11/cst3

Rating:
Strong Points: Interesting ideas
Weak Points: For nerds only

Summary:
I think that the authors of scientific web pages really ought to pay attention to their titles. This one is officially titled “About:Blank.” Hence, I borrowed the acronym of the headline on the opening page, Disease Genes Conserved Sequence Tags Database, to get DG CST. I guess if you’re interested in the database here, the title doesn’t matter once you’ve found it. According to the opening page, DG CST is “a collection of conserved sequence elements, identified by a systematic genomic sequence comparison between a set of human genes involved in the pathogenesis of genetic disorders and their murine counterparts.” Curious to see all the identified genes on chromosome 11? Easy—just enter 11 in the database search window, and you’ve got them. Users can search by 10 criteria that include name, coding potential, species, gene ID, percent coding, and others. 1022 genes are contained in the database, which is aimed at flagging mutations in chromosome areas not obviously linked to known gene features.

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