NCBI has announced big changes to how dbSNP manages human variation data, which will be reflected in Ensembl. These changes include a new allele normalisation approach and the removal of some older population genetics data.
Category: New data and web features
Your input into Ensembl’s new design
Work continues on our exciting new website, which is available as a pre-alpha release. We’ve been consulting with some of you in various ways, such as interviews and meetings, because we want to make sure that the new Ensembl serves your needs. We’re now asking for your help with a short survey, which will just take a couple of minutes to fill in. Plus, you can enter into a draw to win an EMBL-EBI t-shirt.
What’s coming in Ensembl 97 & Ensembl Genomes 44
Both Ensembl release 97 and Ensembl Genomes release 44 are scheduled for mid- to late-June.
Included are a number of new livestock, fish, metazoan, plant, and protist genomes and genebuilds, as well as updates to the mouse and human GENCODE annotation and the human regulatory build.
Read on to see further details of the new data you can look forward to.
We are making ‘MANE’ changes…
The RefSeq column on our gene pages has changed.
We’re moving towards a more unified gene-set with RefSeq, with biologically important transcripts being highlighted as MANE. This means displays you’re used to seeing will be updated to reflect these changes, and this may affect the way you have been working with Ensembl.
Genetic variants on protein structures: our collaboration with the PDBe
We’re fortunate to be part of the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), which puts us alongside stellar bioinformaticians and resources in every discipline. From this, great collaborations can grow. We’ve already worked with our colleagues at Gene Expression Atlas and Reactome to embed widgets in Ensembl for viewing baseline gene expression and biochemical pathways respectively, but our latest collaboration is with the Protein Data Bank in Europe (PDBe) to show genetic variation on protein structures.
Ensembl 2020: pre-alpha release
If you’ve been at VizBi 2019, you’ll have seen Andy Yates previewing our new website design. If not, here’s your chance to take a look.
Coming soon! MANE Select v0.5
Joannella Morales, Jane Loveland and Adam Frankish contributed to this post.
Back in October, we introduced you to our new joint initiative with the NCBI — the Matched Annotation from the NCBI and EMBL-EBI (MANE) transcript set. We are now pleased to update you on our progress so far.
The goal of this project is to share annotation and converge on a high-confidence, genome-wide transcript set, with a matched transcript in both RefSeq and Ensembl/GENCODE. We are doing this in two phases. During phase 1, we will release the “MANE Select” transcript set to include one well-supported transcript for every protein-coding locus. We envision the adoption of the MANE Select set as a default set across genomics resources. In phase 2, we intend to release an expanded set (“MANE Plus”) to include additional transcripts per locus that are well-supported or of particular user interest.
Regulatory build update for Ensembl 95
A brand new regulatory build for the human GRCh38 and GRCh37 assemblies was released in Ensembl 95 earlier this week. The new regulatory build incorporates data for 55 new and 38 updated epigenomes from the ENCODE project. So what are the differences from the previous regulatory build?
The new Ensembl regulatory build for mouse
You may have heard us squeaking about our new mouse regulatory build in our Ensembl 93 release blog. If you’re interested in finding out what exactly a ‘regulatory build’ is, and how to view and download this data in Ensembl, then this is the blog for you!
Introducing the new IWGSC wheat genome assembly
One of the biggest highlights of the new Ensembl Plants release 40 is the inclusion of the new Wheat (RefSeq v1.0) genome from the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC).
The path to sequencing the wheat genome has been no easy ride, due to its large and highly repetitive genome. This new assembly from the IWGSC bridges many gaps from the initial genome sequencing effort. Read on to find out more about this exciting new genome assembly!