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+As vertebrate genome sequences near completion and research re-focuses on their analysis, the issue of effective sequence display becomes critical: it is not helpful to have 3 billion letters of genomic DNA shown as plain text! As an alternative, the UCSC Genome Browser provides a rapid and reliable display of any requested portion of genomes at any scale, together with dozens of aligned annotation tracks (known genes, predicted genes, ESTs, mRNAs, CpG islands, assembly gaps and coverage, chromosomal bands, mouse homologies, and more). Half of the annotation tracks are computed at UCSC from publicly available sequence data. The remaining tracks are provided by collaborators worldwide. Users can also add their own custom tracks to the browser for educational or research purposes.
The Genome Browser stacks annotation tracks beneath genome coordinate positions, allowing rapid