Manatee

Manatee is a web based manual annotation and analysis tool that acts as in interface between an underlying database and an annotator. Manatee can interact with the MySQL database provided to Annotation Engine users. Manatee retrieves search and annotation information from the underlying database and presents it in a web format to an annotator. Manatee's interface allows the annotator to adjust, add, and edit any annotations attached to the protein being annotated. All changes are stored back in the underlying database. Currently, Manatee must be installed on a Linux or Solaris Unix system. When installed on a web server, Manatee can be accessed via a web browser by any computer at the user's site (Linux, Mac, Windows, etc.). Multiple users can access and edit the database of any given genome at the same time.

Manatee is freely available and open source. There is a Manatee SourceForge site that contains information on getting involved in Manatee development as well as extensive documentation on the installation and use of Manatee. New releases of Manatee are regularly placed on the SourceForge site.

Manatee is a comprehensive tool that allows viewing of both information describing the whole genome and information for just one gene. Individual 'Gene Curation Pages' display all available information for that gene. Annotation including protein name, gene symbol, EC number, and GO terms is displayed for each protein in an editable format. In addition, all of the supporting search evidence (BER pairwise matches, HMM matches, TMHMM/SignalP results, PROSITE matches) are displayed so that the annotator can critically evaluate the results and adjust annotations as necessary. Another important feature of the Manatee tool is the Genome Viewer component. With this tool one can view and edit genes of interest in the context of their neighbors on the DNA molecule (e.g. chromosome, plasmid) on which they reside.

On the Manatee SourceForge page you will find additional documentation and installation instructions.