Section: New Results

Annotation database system to ease the development and update of BioCyc databases

In recent years, genomes from an increasing number of organisms have been sequenced, but their annotation remains a time-consuming process. The BioCyc databases offer a framework for the integrated analysis of metabolic networks. The Pathway tool software suite allows the automated construction of a database starting from an annotated genome, but it requires prior integration of all annotations into a specific summary file or into a GenBank file. To allow the easy creation and update of a BioCyc database starting from the multiple genome annotation resources available over time, we developed an ad hoc data management system that we called Cyc Annotation Database System (CycADS ) [22] . The CycADS pipeline for annotation management was used to build the AcypiCyc database for the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, TricaCyc for Tribolium castaneum and DromeCyc for Drosophila melanogaster. This work will be extended to create a database for other arthropods. This work was done in collaboration among others with S. Collela.