Comparative Genomic Analysis Using the UCSC Genome Browser

Comparative analysis of DNA sequence from multiple species can provide insights into the function and evolutionary processes that shape genomes. The University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Genome Bioinformatics group has developed several tools and methodologies in its study of comparative genomics, many of which have been incorporated into the UCSC Genome Browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu ), an easy-to-use online tool for browsing genomic data and aligned annotation “tracks” in a single window. The comparative genomics annotations in the browser include pairwise alignments, which aid in the identification of orthologous regions between species, and conservation tracks that show measures of evolutionary conservation among sets of multiply aligned species, highlighting regions of the genome that may be functionally important.A related tool, the UCSC Table Browser, provides a simple interface for querying, analyzing,and downloading the data underlying the Genome Browser annotation tracks. Here, we describe a procedure for examining a genomic region of interest in the Genome Browser, analyzing characteristics of the region, filtering the data, and downloading data sets for further study.