Software

Apollo2Go: a web service adapter for the Apollo genome viewer to enable distributed genome annotation

Kathrin Klee , Rebecca Ernst , Manuel Spannagl and Klaus FX Mayer

MIPS/Institute for Bioinformatics, GSF Research Center for Environment and Health, Ingolstädter Landstrasse 1; 85764 Neuherberg, Germany

author email corresponding author email

BMC Bioinformatics 2007, 8:320doi:10.1186/1471-2105-8-320

Published:	30 August 2007

Abstract

Background

Apollo, a genome annotation viewer and editor, has become a widely used genome annotation and visualization tool for distributed genome annotation projects. When using Apollo for annotation, database updates are carried out by uploading intermediate annotation files into the respective database. This non-direct database upload is laborious and evokes problems of data synchronicity.

Results

To overcome these limitations we extended the Apollo data adapter with a generic, configurable web service client that is able to retrieve annotation data in a GAME-XML-formatted string and pass it on to Apollo's internal input routine.

Conclusion

This Apollo web service adapter, Apollo2Go, simplifies the data exchange in distributed projects and aims to render the annotation process more comfortable.

The Apollo2Go software is freely available from ftp://ftpmips.gsf.de/plants/apollo_webservice webcite.