HOMOLENS

HOMOLENS provides high-quality homologous gene families, multiple sequence alignments, and phylogenetic trees to support comparative genomics analyses of metazoan genomes from Ensembl.

Key Features:

• Automated comparative genomics pipeline: Performs massive all-against-all similarity searches, gene clustering, multiple sequence alignment computations, and phylogenetic tree construction.
• Data content: Stores curated homologous gene families, sequence alignments, and phylogenetic trees derived from metazoan genomes.
• Parallel computing infrastructure: Executes analyses on a large computer cluster using parallel computing to process large sequence datasets.
• Database architecture and scope: Shares underlying architecture with HOVERGEN and HOGENOM and is specialized for Ensembl-derived metazoan genomes.

Scientific Applications:

• Gene annotation: Supports transfer and validation of gene annotations through homologous family information and alignments.
• Identification of novel functional regions: Enables detection of conserved regions that may indicate new functional genome elements.
• Evolutionary studies: Facilitates analyses of speciation events and gene duplications using homologous families and phylogenies.
• Phylogenetics: Provides multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees for reconstructing evolutionary relationships.
• Comparative genomics investigations: Supplies structured homologous families and alignments for broad comparative analyses across metazoans.

Methodology:

Automated workflow combining massive all-against-all similarity searches, gene clustering, multiple sequence alignment computations, and phylogenetic tree construction executed on a parallel computing cluster.