We are pleased to announce that Ensembl Genomes 36 has now been released, which includes new and updated genome assemblies and gene annotation as well as updated variation data and comparative genomics analyses. Find out more below:

• Ensembl Bacteria includes an additional 142 genomes from release 35 together with an update to gene families.
• Ensembl Fungi has added gene symbols for 1-to-1 orthologues from S. cerevisiae to Botrytis cinerea and includes updated PHI-base 4.3 annotations.
• Ensembl Metazoa now has automated RNA gene annotation for 37 species (i.e. all species that have not been imported from FlyBase, VectorBase or WormBase) and alignment of Rfam 12.2 covariance models for all species. There are also updated protein features, which now includes features from new sources (CDD, MobiDB and SFLD).
• Ensembl Protists now has new automatic ncRNA alignments across all protist species as well as updated PHI-base 4.3 annotations.
• Ensembl Plants now includes the new genome assembly for Hordeum vulgare (barley), the biggest diploid yet sequenced, which is included in updated comparative peptide analyses for all species. There are also new ncRNA gene annotations and new plant reactome cross references across all plant species. New and updated variation data has also been included in this release for both Oryza sativa and Arabidopsis thaliana. Last, but not least, 80829 variation markers from the iSelect 90k array and 13.8 million Inter-Homoeologous Variants (IHVs) have been added to the wheat assembly, along with chloroplast and mitochondrial components (including gene annotations) imported from ENA.

Please see the release notes for full details of the updates.