Prometheus: omics portals for interkingdom comparative genomic analyses

Abstract

Functional analyses of genes are crucial for unveiling biological responses, for genetic engineering, and for developing new medicines. However, functional analyses have largely been restricted to model organisms, representing a major hurdle for functional studies and industrial applications. To resolve this, comparative genome analyses can be used to provide clues to gene functions as well as their evolutionary history. To this end, we present Prometheus (http://prometheus.kobic.re.kr),web-based omics portal that contains more than 17,215 sequences from prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes. This portal supports interkingdom comparative analyses via a domain architecture-based gene identification system, Gene Search, and users can easily and rapidly identify single or entire gene sets in specific pathways. Bioinformatics tools for further analyses are provided in Prometheus or through BioExpress, a cloud-based bioinformatics analysis platform. Prometheus suggests a new paradigm for comparative analyses with large amounts of genomic information.