GAMOLA: a new local solution for sequence annotation and analyzing draft and finished prokaryotic genomes.

Laboratories working with draft phase genomes have specific software needs, such as the unattended processing of hundreds of single scaffolds and subsequent sequence annotation. In addition, it is critical to follow the "movement" and the manual annotation of single open reading frames (ORFs) within the successive sequence updates. Even with finished genomes, regular database updates can lead to significant changes in the annotation of single ORFs. In functional genomics it is important to mine data and identify new genetic targets rapidly and easily. Often there is no need for sophisticated relational databases (RDB) that greatly reduce the system-independent access of the results. Another aspect is the internet dependency of most software packages. If users are working with confidential data, this dependency poses a security issue. GAMOLA was designed to handle the numerous scaffolds and changing contents of draft phase genomes in an automated process and stores the results for each predicted ORF in flatfile databases. In addition, annotation transfers, ORF designation tracking, Blast comparisons, and primer design for whole genome microarrays have been implemented. The software is available under the license of North Carolina State University. A website and a downloadable example are accessible under (http://fsweb2.schaub. ncsu.edu/TRKwebsite/index.htm).