DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop VIII
February 27-March 2, 2000  Santa Fe, NM

76. WIT2 -- An Integrated System for Genetic Sequence Analysis and Metabolic Reconstruction

Ross Overbeek^1,2, Gordon Pusch^1,2, Mark D'Souza¹, Evgeni Selkov Jr.^1,2, Evgeni Selkov^1,2, and Natalia Maltsev¹

¹Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL and ²Integrated Genomics Inc., Chicago, IL

maltsev@mcs.anl.gov

The WIT2 system was designed and implemented to support genetic sequence and comparative analysis of sequenced genomes as well as metabolic reconstructions from the sequence data. It now contains data from 38 distinct genomes. WIT2 provides access to thoroughly annotated genomes within a framework of metabolic reconstructions, connected to the sequence data; protein alignments and phylogenetic trees; as well as data on gene clusters, potential operons and functional domains. We believe that the parallel analysis of a large number of phylogenetically diverse genomes simultaneously can add a great deal to our understanding of the higher level functional subsystems and physiology of the organisms. The unique features if WIT2 include: 1. WIT2 is based on the unique EMP/MPW collection of the enzymes and metabolic pathways developed by E. Selkov et al., which contains extensive information on enzymology and metabolism of different organisms. 2. WIT2 allows researchers to perform interactive genetic sequence analysis within a framework of metabolic reconstructions and to maintain user models of the organism's functionality. 3. WIT2 provides access to a set of Web-based and original batch tools that offer extensible query access against the data. 4. WIT2 supports both shared and nonshared annotation of features and the maintenance of multiple models of the metabolism for each organism. 5. WIT2 supports metabolic reconstructions from Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) data.