EMBL Launches Genomics Data Resource
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) has launched a genomics resource called the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) that consolidates three DNA and RNA sequence databases. EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) will host the ENA resource, which is made up of the EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database, the European Trace Archive, and the Sequence Read Archive (SRA). The European Trace Archive, formerly maintained at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, contains raw data from electrophoresis-based sequencing machines, while the SRA is a new repository for raw data from next-generation, array-based sequencing platforms. The ENA research team plans to launch new features for the resource over the coming year, including enhancements for the browser, improved interactive submissions tools and organism and project-centered portals into ENA data. "ENA has been designed to provide our users with improved access both to annotated and to raw sequence data through the s...