ESTExplorer: An expressed sequence tag (EST) assembly and annotation platform

Abstract

The analysis of expressed sequence tag (EST) datasets offers a rapid and cost-effective approach to elucidate the transcriptome of an organism, but requiring several computational methods for assembly and annotation. ESTExplorer is a comprehensive workflow system for EST data management and analysis. The pipeline uses a 'distributed control approach' in which the most appropriate bioinformatics tools are implemented over different dedicated processors. Species-specific repeat masking and conceptual translation are in-built. ESTExplorer accepts a set of ESTs in FASTA format which can be analysed using programs selected by the user. After pre-processing and assembly, the dataset is annotated a..