Mar
8
The good and bad of genome viewers
Back before the human genome was fully sequenced and NCBI, UCSC and Ensembl started working on visualization, it made a lot of sense to go for linear representations and use tracks for annotation. After all: chromosomes are linear. Using different tracks to show different types of annotation is the next logical step.
But there is not just one human genome on earth; according to Wikipedia there's about 6.76 billion copies as of March 2009. So instead of talking about "the human genome" in those browsers, we talk about "the reference genome". Each person on earth is different, and so is each human genome. (That putting the reasoning on its head, but never mind).
Differences between humans such as SNPs and microsatellites can still be shown in the track-based browsers.
But there is not just one human genome on earth; according to Wikipedia there's about 6.76 billion copies as of March 2009. So instead of talking about "the human genome" in those browsers, we talk about "the reference genome". Each person on earth is different, and so is each human genome. (That putting the reasoning on its head, but never mind).
Differences between humans such as SNPs and microsatellites can still be shown in the track-based browsers.
