97805fb2ceb73357aa78aa94107148dc355d4e1c
mspeir
  Tue Sep 22 08:36:22 2026 -0700
Conservation tracks: give the description pages a real Data Access section, refs #34803

The hgdownload link block on these pages had no header, and on 18 of them it sat
above the Description, which is where it got overlooked. Move it into an
<h2>Data Access</h2> in the usual place, after Methods and before Credits, and
add pointers to the Table Browser, the Data Integrator and the REST API, plus
the maf* and bigWig* command line tools.

134 pages: 55 had a download block that was moved and labeled, 56 get a list
built from hgdownload directories that were checked to exist, 21 have no
download directory of their own and so get the Table Browser and API pointers
only, and 2 already had a Data Access section that was reworked. Existing
download lists are unchanged apart from http -> https and an added
target="_blank".

Wording follows what each track actually holds, so the alignment-only pages do
not claim conservation scores and the Data Integrator is only mentioned where it
can really be used, since it does not handle MAF.

Also corrects one link: hg18 cons44way pointed at multiz44way/maf, which
redirects; it is now multiz44way/maf/.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

diff --git src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer2/multiz6way.html src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer2/multiz6way.html
index f68a9b882b3..6322be8d71e 100644
--- src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer2/multiz6way.html
+++ src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer2/multiz6way.html
@@ -1,155 +1,182 @@
 <H2>Description</H2>
 <P>
 This track shows a measure of evolutionary conservation in $organism, 
 Tetraodon, Fugu, mouse, human and opossum based on a phylogenetic hidden 
 Markov model (phastCons). Multiz alignments of the following assemblies 
 were used to generate this annotation: 
 <UL>
 <LI>$organism ($date, $db)
 <LI>Tetraodon (Feb. 2004, tetNig1)
 <LI>Fugu (Aug. 2002, fr1)
 <LI>human (May 2004, hg17)
 <LI>mouse (Mar. 2005, mm6)
 <LI>opossum (Oct. 2004, monDom1)
 </UL></P>
 
 <H2>Display Conventions and Configuration</H2> <P>
 <P>
 In full display mode, this track shows the overall conservation score across 
 all species, as well as pairwise alignments of human, mouse, opossum, 
 Fugu and Tetraodon each aligned to the $organism genome.  The pairwise 
 alignments are shown in dense display mode using a grayscale 
 density gradient.  The checkboxes in the track configuration section allow
 the exclusion of species from the pairwise display; however, this does not
 remove them from the conservation score display.  </P>
 <P>
 When zoomed-in to the base-display level, the track shows the base 
 composition of each alignment. The numbers and symbols on the Gaps
 line indicate the lengths of gaps in the $organism sequence at those 
 alignment positions relative to the longest non-$organism sequence.
 If there is sufficient space in the display, the size of the gap is shown; 
 if not, and if the gap size is a multiple of 3, a &quot;*&quot; is displayed, 
 otherwise &quot;+&quot; is shown.
 To view detailed information about the alignments at a specific position,
 zoom in the display to 30,000 or fewer bases, then click on the alignment.</P>
 <P>
 This track may be configured in a variety of ways to highlight different aspects
 of the displayed information. Click the 
 <A HREF="../goldenPath/help/hgWiggleTrackHelp.html" TARGET=_blank>Graph 
 configuration help</A> link for an explanation of the configuration options.</P>
 
 <H2>Methods</H2>
 <P> 
 Best-in-genome blastz pairwise alignments were multiply aligned using 
 multiz, beginning with $organism-human alignments and subsequently adding 
 in mouse and opossum. This was added to an alignment of $organism-Tetraodon 
 aligned to Fugu. The resulting multiple alignments were then assigned 
 conservation scores by phastCons.</P>
 <P>
 The phastCons program computes conservation scores based on a phylo-HMM, a
 type of probabilistic model that describes both the process of DNA
 substitution at each site in a genome and the way this process changes from
 one site to the next (Felsenstein and Churchill 1996, Yang 1995, Siepel and
 Haussler 2005).  PhastCons uses a two-state phylo-HMM, with a state for
 conserved regions and a state for non-conserved regions.  The value plotted
 at each site is the posterior probability that the corresponding alignment
 column was "generated" by the conserved state of the phylo-HMM.  These
 scores reflect the phylogeny (including branch lengths) of the species in
 question, a continuous-time Markov model of the nucleotide substitution
 process, and a tendency for conservation levels to be autocorrelated along
 the genome (i.e., to be similar at adjacent sites).  The general reversible
 (REV) substitution model was used.  Note that, unlike many
 conservation-scoring programs, phastCons does not rely on a sliding window
 of fixed size, so short highly-conserved regions and long moderately
 conserved regions can both obtain high scores.  More information about
 phastCons can be found in Siepel et al. (2005).</P> 
 <P> 
 PhastCons currently treats alignment gaps as missing data, which
 sometimes has the effect of producing undesirably high conservation scores
 in gappy regions of the alignment.  We are looking at several possible ways
 of improving the handling of alignment gaps.</P>
 
+<h2>Data Access</h2>
+<p>
+The alignments and the conservation scores can be retrieved for a single region or for a list of
+regions with the <a
+href="hgTables?db=danRer2&amp;hgta_group=compGeno&amp;hgta_track=multiz6way">Table Browser</a>,
+which returns the alignments in MAF format and the scores as wiggle data. The conservation
+scores, though not the alignments, can also be joined with other annotations in the <a
+href="hgIntegrator?db=danRer2">Data Integrator</a>. For automated access, our <a
+href="../goldenPath/help/api.html">REST API</a> serves the alignment and conservation tracks
+individually, by name.
+</p>
+<p>
+The files behind this track can be downloaded from our download server:
+<ul>
+  <li><a href="https://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/danRer2/multiz6way/"
+  target="_blank">Multiz alignments and phylogenetic trees</a></li>
+</ul>
+</p>
+<p>
+Genome-wide alignment files are large. Among our command-line programs, <tt>mafsInRegion</tt>,
+<tt>mafSpeciesSubset</tt> and <tt>mafFrags</tt> pull out a region, a subset of species, or the
+alignment underlying a gene. They can be downloaded from the <a
+href="https://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/admin/exe/" target="_blank">utilities directory</a>, and
+each one prints its usage when run with no arguments. See our <a
+href="../FAQ/FAQdownloads.html">Data Access FAQ</a> for more information.
+</p>
+
 <H2>Credits</H2>
 <P>
 This track was created at UCSC using the following programs:
 <UL>
 <LI>
 Blastz and multiz by Minmei Hou, Scott Schwartz and Webb Miller of the 
 <A HREF="http://bio.cse.psu.edu/" TARGET=_blank>Penn State Bioinformatics 
 Group</A>. 
 <LI>
 AxtBest, axtChain, chainNet, netSyntenic, and netClass 
 by Jim Kent at UCSC. 
 <LI> PhastCons by Adam Siepel at Cornell University. 
 <LI>"Wiggle track" plotting software by Hiram Clawson at UCSC.
 </UL>
 </P>
 <P>The phylogenetic tree is based on Murphy et al. (2001) and general
 consensus in the vertebrate phylogeny community.
 </P>
 
 <H2>References</H2>
 
 <H3>Phylo-HMMs and phastCons</H3>
 <P>
 Felsenstein J and Churchill GA (1996).  
 <A HREF="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/93"
 TARGET=_blank>A hidden Markov model approach to 
 variation among sites in rate of evolution</A>.
 <em>Mol Biol Evol</em> 13:93-104. </P>
 <P>
 Siepel A and Haussler D (2005). Phylogenetic hidden Markov models.
 In R. Nielsen, ed., <em>Statistical Methods in Molecular Evolution</em>,
 pp. 325-351, Springer, New York. </P>
 <P>
 Siepel, A., Bejerano, G., Pedersen, J.S., Hinrichs, A., Hou, M., Rosenbloom, 
 K., Clawson, H., Spieth, J., Hillier, L.W., Richards, S., Weinstock, G.M., 
 Wilson, R. K., Gibbs, R.A., Kent, W.J., Miller, W., and Haussler, D. 
 <A HREF="http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.3715005"
 TARGET=_blank>Evolutionarily conserved elements in vertebrate, insect, worm, 
 and yeast genomes</A>.
 <em>Genome Res.</em> <B>15</B>, 1034-1050 (2005).</P>
 <P>
 Yang Z (1995).  
 <A HREF="http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/abstract/139/2/993" 
 TARGET=_blank>A space-time process model for the evolution of DNA
 sequences</A>.  <em>Genetics</em>, 139:993-1005. </P>
 
 <H3>Chain/Net</H3>
 <P>
 Kent, W.J., Baertsch, R., Hinrichs, A., Miller, W., and Haussler, D.
 <A HREF="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/1932072100v1"
 TARGET=_blank>Evolution's cauldron: Duplication, deletion, and rearrangement
 in the mouse and human genomes</A>.
 <em>Proc Natl Acad Sci USA</em> <B>100</B>(20), 11484-11489 (2003).</P>
 
 <H3>Multiz</H3>
 <P>
 Blanchette, M., Kent, W.J., Riemer, C., Elnitski, L., Smit, A.F.A.,
 Roskin, K.M., Baertsch, R., Rosenbloom, K., Clawson, H., Green, E.D.,
 Haussler, D., Miller, W.
 <A HREF="http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/4/708"
 TARGET=_blank>Aligning multiple genomic sequences with the threaded blockset
 aligner</A>.
 <em>Genome Res.</em> <B>14</B>(4), 708-15 (2004).</P>
 
 <H3>Blastz</H3>
 <P>
 Chiaromonte, F., Yap, V.B., Miller, W.
 <A HREF="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11928468&dopt=Abstract"
 TARGET=_blank>Scoring pairwise genomic sequence alignments</A>.
 <em>Pac Symp Biocomput 2002</em>, 115-26 (2002).</P>
 <P>
 Schwartz, S., Kent, W.J., Smit, A., Zhang, Z., Baertsch, R., Hardison, R.,
 Haussler, D., and Miller, W.
 <A HREF="http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/103"
 TARGET=_blank>Human-Mouse Alignments with BLASTZ</A>.
 <em>Genome Res.</em> <B>13</B>(1), 103-7 (2003).</P>
 
 <H3>Phylogenetic Tree</H3>
 <P>
 Murphy, W.J., et al.
 <A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/294/5550/2348"
 TARGET=_blank>Resolution of the early placental mammal radiation using Bayesian phylogenetics</A>.
 <em>Science</em> <B>294</B>(5550), 2348-51 (2001).</P>