UTGB toolkit for personalized genome browsers

Abstract

The advent of high-throughput DNA sequencers has increased the pace of collecting enormous amounts of genomic information, yielding billions of nucleotides on a weekly basis. This advance represents an improvement of two orders of magnitude over traditional Sanger sequencers in terms of the number of nucleotides per unit time, allowing even small groups of researchers to obtain huge volumes of genomic data over fairly short period. Consequently, a pressing need exists for the development of personalized genome browsers for analyzing these immense amounts of locally stored data. The UTGB (University of Tokyo Genome Browser) Toolkit is designed to meet three major requirements for personalization of genome browsers: easy installation of the system with minimum efforts, browsing locally stored data and rapid interactive design of web interfaces tailored to individual needs. The UTGB Toolkit is licensed under an open source license. © 2009 The Author(s).