HvrBase++: a phylogenetic database for primate species.

Abstract

HvrBase++ is the improved and extended version of HvrBase. Extensions are made by adding more population-based sequence samples from all primates including humans. The current collection comprises 13,873 hypervariable region I (HVRI) sequences and 4940 hypervariable region II (HVRII) sequences. In addition, we included 1376 complete mitochondrial genomes, 205 sequences from X-chromosomal loci and 202 sequences from autosomal chromosomes 1, 8, 11 and 16. In order to reduce the introduction of erroneous data into HvrBase++, we have developed a procedure that monitors GenBank for new versions of the current data in HvrBase++ and automatically updates the collection if necessary. For the stored sequences, supplementary information such as geographic origin, population affiliation and language of the sequence donor can be retrieved. HvrBase++ is Oracle based and easily accessible by a web interface (http://www.hvrbase.org). As a new key feature, HvrBase++ provides an interactive graphical tool to easily access data from dynamically created geographical maps.