127. IMAGEne II: EST Clustering and Ranking of I.M.A.G.E. cDNA Clones Corresponding to Known and Unknown Genes 

Peg Folta, Tom Kuczmarski, and Christa Prange 
Lawrance Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 
pfolta@llnl.gov 

With just under 2 million entries in dbEST, the ability to select the best cDNA clone(s) to conduct costly research is becoming increasingly difficult. The I.M.A.G.E. Consortium has developed the IMAGEne II product to increase the value of its cDNA collection by organizing its corresponding dbEST information at a gene level. IMAGEne II first clusters I.M.A.G.E. clones to both known and "unknown" genes. It then ranks the clones within a cluster as to their ability to represent the gene. A java-based display allows users to query against this database of information and view the alignment of the clusters at the nucleotide level. While the current product deals with the human species only, it will soon be extended to include other species and multi-species clusters. 

This work was performed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy, Contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.