EST Knowledge Integrated Systems (EKIS): An Integrated Database of EST Information for Research Application

ABSTRACT

The EST Knowledge Integrated System, EKIS (http://ekis.kribb.re.kr), was established as a part of Korea's Ministry of Education, Science and Technology initiative for genome sequencing and application research of the biological model organisms (GEAR) project. The goals of the EKIS are to collect EST information from GEAR projects and make an integrated database to provide transcriptomic and metabolomic information for biological scientists. The EKIS constitutes five independent categories and several retrieval systems in each category for incorporating massive EST data from high-throughput sequencing of 65 different species. Through the EKIS database, scientists can freely access information including BLAST functional annotation as well as Genechip and pathway information for KEGG. By integrating complex data into a framework of existing EST knowledge information, the EKIS provides new insights into specialized metabolic pathway information for an applied industrial material.