Dcode.org anthology of comparative genomic tools. Nucleic Acids Res., 33, W56–W64. Loots,G.G. et al. (2002) rVista for comparative sequence-based discovery of functional transcription factor binding sites

Comparative genomics provides the means to demarcate functional regions in anonymous DNA sequences. The successful application of this method to identifying novel genes is currently shifting to deci-phering the non-coding encryption of gene regulation across genomes. To facilitate the practical applica-tion of comparative sequence analysis to genetics and genomics, we have developed several analytical and visualization tools for the analysis of arbitrary sequences and whole genomes. These tools include two alignment tools, zPicture and Mulan; a phylo-genetic shadowing tool, eShadow for identifying lineage- and species-specific functional elements; two evolutionary conserved transcription factor analysis tools, rVista and multiTF; a tool for extracting cis-regulatory modules governing the expression of co-regulated genes, Creme 2.0; and a dynamic portal to multiple vertebrate and invertebrate genome alignments, the ECR Browser. Here, we briefly describe each one of these tools and provide specific examples on their practical applications. All the tools are publicly available at th