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/danRer3/multiz5way.html src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer3/multiz5way.html
index 7700f6b2a86..43a836863b0 100644
--- src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer3/multiz5way.html
+++ src/hg/makeDb/trackDb/zebrafish/danRer3/multiz5way.html
@@ -1,244 +1,271 @@
 <H2>Description</H2>
 <P>
 This track shows a measure of evolutionary conservation in $organism, 
 Tetraodon, Fugu, mouse and human based on a phylogenetic hidden 
 Markov model, phastCons (Siepel <em>et al.</em>, 2005). Multiz alignments of 
 the following assemblies were used to generate this annotation: 
 <UL>
 <LI>$organism ($date, $db)
 <LI>Tetraodon (Feb. 2004, tetNig1)
 <LI>Fugu (Aug. 2002, fr1)
 <LI>human (Feb. 2006, hg18)
 <LI>mouse (Aug. 2005, mm7)
 </UL></P>
 
 <H2>Display Conventions and Configuration</H2> <P>
 <P>
 In dense display mode, conservation scores are shown in grayscale using
 darker values to indicate higher levels of overall conservation as scored by 
 phastCons. In squish, pack, and full display modes, the phastCons scores are 
 represented by a &quot;wiggle&quot; track (histogram) in which the bar or
 point height reflects the size of the score. In full and pack 
 modes, the track also displays pairwise alignments of each species to the
 $organism genome using a density gradient (pack mode) or wiggle track (full 
 mode) to indicate the level of conservation.
 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.
 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>
 <P>
 Gaps between pairwise alignment blocks are annotated as follows:
 <UL>
 <LI><B>Single line:</B> No bases in the aligned species. Possibly due to a 
 lineage-specific insertion between the aligned blocks in the $organism genome 
 or a lineage-specific deletion between the aligned blocks in the aligning 
 species.
 <LI><B>Double line:</B> Aligning species has one or more unalignable bases in 
 the gap region. Possibly due to excessive evolutionary distance between 
 species or independent indels in the region between the aligned blocks in both 
 species. 
 <LI><B>Yellowish-white coloring:</B> Aligning species has Ns in the gap region. 
 Reflects uncertaintly in the relationship between the DNA of both species, due 
 to lack of sequence in  relevant portions of the aligning species. 
 </UL></P>
 <P>
 Discontinuities in the genomic context (chromosome, scaffold or region) of the 
 aligned DNA in the aligning species are annotated as follows: 
 <UL>
 <LI>
 <B>Vertical blue bar:</B> Represents a discontinuity that persists indefinitely 
 on either side, <em>e.g.</em> a large region of DNA on either side of the bar 
 comes from a different chromosome in the aligned species due to a large scale 
 rearrangement.
 <LI>
 <B>Green square brackets:</B> Enclose shorter alignments consisting of DNA from 
 one genomic context in the aligned species nested inside a larger chain of 
 alignments from a different genomic context. The alignment within the 
 brackets may represent a short misalignment, a lineage-specific insertion of a 
 transposon in the $organism genome that aligns to a paralogous copy somewhere 
 else in the aligned species, or other similar occurrence.
 </UL></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 zebrafish sequence at those 
 alignment positions relative to the longest non-zebrafish 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.</P>
 <P>
 Codon translation annotation is available in base-level display mode if the 
 displayed region is identified as a coding segment. To display this annotation,
 select the species for translation from the pull-down menu in the Codon 
 Translation configuration section at the top of the page. Then, select one of
 the following modes: 
 <UL>
 <LI>
 <B>No codon translation:</B> The gene annotation is not used; the bases are 
 displayed without translation. 
 <LI>
 <B>Use default species reading frames for translation:</B> The annotations from the genome 
 displayed 
 in the <em>Default species to establish reading frame</em> pull-down menu are used to 
 translate all the aligned species present in the alignment. 
 <LI>
 <B>Use reading frames for species if available, otherwise no translation:</B> Codon 
 translation is done only on those species that are annotated as being coding 
 over the aligned region. 
 <LI><B>Use reading frames for species if available, otherwise use default species:</B> 
 Codon translation is done on those species that are annotated as being coding 
 over the aligned region using species-specific annotation; the remaining 
 species are translated using the default species annotation.
 </UL></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. 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=danRer3&amp;hgta_group=compGeno&amp;hgta_track=multiz5way">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=danRer3">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/danRer3/multiz5way/"
+  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 using the following programs:
 <UL>
 <LI> Alignment tools: blastz and multiz by Minmei Hou, Scott Schwartz and Webb 
 Miller of the <A HREF="http://www.bx.psu.edu/miller_lab/" 
 TARGET=_blank>Penn State Bioinformatics Group</A>
 <LI> Chaining and Netting:  axtChain, chainNet by Jim Kent at UCSC
 <LI> Conservation scoring: PhastCons, phyloFit, tree_doctor, msa_view by 
 <A HREF="https://siepellab.labsites.cshl.edu/"
 TARGET=_blank>Adam Siepel</A> while at UCSC, now at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
 <LI> MAF Annotation tools: mafAddIRows by Brian Raney, UCSC; 
 genePredToMafFrames by Mark Diekhans, UCSC
 <LI> Tree image generator: phyloPng by Galt Barber, UCSC
 <LI> Conservation track display: Kate Rosenbloom, Hiram Clawson (wiggle 
 display), and Brian Raney (gap annotation and codon framing) 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, Churchill GA.
 <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/13/1/93/1055515"
 target="_blank">A Hidden Markov Model approach to
 variation among sites in rate of evolution</a>.
 <em>Mol Biol Evol</em>. 1996 Jan;13(1):93-104.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8583911" target="_blank">8583911</a>
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Siepel A, Bejerano G, Pedersen JS, Hinrichs AS, Hou M, Rosenbloom K,
 Clawson H, Spieth J, Hillier LW, Richards S, <em>et al.</em>
 <a href="https://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/8/1034"
 target="_blank">Evolutionarily conserved elements in vertebrate, insect, worm,
 and yeast genomes</a>.
 <em>Genome Res</em>. 2005 Aug;15(8):1034-50.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16024819" target="_blank">16024819</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182216/" target="_blank">PMC1182216</a>
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Siepel A, Haussler D.
 <a href="https://repository.cshl.edu/id/eprint/31038/"
 target="_blank">Phylogenetic Hidden Markov Models</a>.
 In: Nielsen R, editor. Statistical Methods in Molecular Evolution.
 New York: Springer; 2005. pp. 325-351.
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Yang Z.
 <a href="https://www.genetics.org/content/139/2/993"
 target="_blank">A space-time process model for the evolution of DNA
 sequences</a>.
 <em>Genetics</em>. 1995 Feb;139(2):993-1005.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7713447" target="_blank">7713447</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1206396/" target="_blank">PMC1206396</a>
 </p>
 
 <H3>Chain/Net</H3>
 <p>
 Kent WJ, Baertsch R, Hinrichs A, Miller W, Haussler D.
 <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/100/20/11484"
 target="_blank">Evolution's cauldron:
 duplication, deletion, and rearrangement in the mouse and human genomes</a>.
 <em>Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A</em>. 2003 Sep 30;100(20):11484-9.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14500911" target="_blank">14500911</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC208784/" target="_blank">PMC208784</a>
 </p>
 
 <H3>Multiz</H3>
 <p>
 Blanchette M, Kent WJ, Riemer C, Elnitski L, Smit AF, Roskin KM,
 Baertsch R, Rosenbloom K, Clawson H, Green ED, <em>et al.</em>
 <a href="https://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/4/708.abstract"
 target="_blank">Aligning multiple genomic sequences with the threaded blockset aligner</a>.
 <em>Genome Res</em>. 2004 Apr;14(4):708-15.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15060014" target="_blank">15060014</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC383317/" target="_blank">PMC383317</a>
 </p>
 
 <H3>Blastz</H3>
 <p>
 Chiaromonte F, Yap VB, Miller W.
 <a href="http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/proceedings/psb02/chiaromonte.pdf"
 target="_blank">Scoring pairwise genomic sequence alignments</a>.
 <em>Pac Symp Biocomput</em>. 2002:115-26.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11928468" target="_blank">11928468</a>
 </p>
 
 <p>
 Schwartz S, Kent WJ, Smit A, Zhang Z, Baertsch R, Hardison RC,
 Haussler D, Miller W.
 <a href="https://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/1/103.abstract"
 target="_blank">Human-mouse alignments with BLASTZ</a>.
 <em>Genome Res</em>. 2003 Jan;13(1):103-7.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12529312" target="_blank">12529312</a>; PMC: <a
 href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC430961/" target="_blank">PMC430961</a>
 </p>
 
 <H3>Phylogenetic Tree</H3>
 <p>
 Murphy WJ, Eizirik E, O'Brien SJ, Madsen O, Scally M, Douady CJ, Teeling E,
 Ryder OA, Stanhope MJ, de Jong WW, Springer MS.
 <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/294/5550/2348"
 target="_blank">Resolution of the early placental mammal radiation using Bayesian phylogenetics</a>.
 <em>Science</em>. 2001 Dec 14;294(5550):2348-51.
 PMID: <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11743200" target="_blank">11743200</a>
 </p>