Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) offer a rapid and cost effective method to understand the transcriptome of an organism, leading to enormous data as short, unedited, single-pass sequence reads. Several computational methods are essential to assemble and annotate them. A comprehensive workflow approach resulting in gene and protein annotation is as yet unavailable [1].

 

We have compared currently available methods adopted for each step of EST analysis including EST clustering, assembly, consensus generation and tools for DNA or protein downstream annotation, on benchmark EST datasets [1]. We have incorporated the best combination of programs while designing  ESTExplorer [2].

ESTExplorer is a comprehensive workflow environment which can be used efficiently to :

 

Please cite the following references if you use ESTExplorer:

1. Nagaraj SH, Gasser RB, Ranganathan S. A hitchhiker's guide to expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis. Brief Bioinform, 2007, 8, 6-21;

2. Nagaraj SH, Deshpande N,Gasser RB, Ranganathan S. ESTExplorer: an automated assembly and annotation platform to analyse expressed sequence tags (ESTs).Nucleic Acids Res. 2007 Jul;35
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