Retrieving data from OGRe. happens in two stages. Selecting the species, then selecting the data you wish to view.

You can select species in two ways:

(i) 'Select Species Alphabetically' - check the boxes for the desired species from an alphabetical list.

(ii) 'Select Species From Taxonomy' - You can select all species in a taxonomic group (e.g. all Echinoderms, or all Nematodes). The larger groups can be expanded into sub-groups (e.g. all Vertebrates, or all Mammals, or all Carnivores). You can also select individual species from the list of organisms in each taxonomic group.

After selecting a set of species use one of the four buttons at the foot of the page

'View Genomes' - This produces a representation of each genome drawn to scale. Genes drawn as boxes below the central line are on the plus strand (left to right), and genes drawn above the line are on the minus strand (right to left).

'Display Sequences' - This gives a scroll box with a list of genes from which you can select one or more. Click either view or download to get a fasta format sequence file for the selected genes from the selected species.

'Codon Usage' - This produces a table of codon usage for each selected species. The two strands are counted separately because they are significantly different.

'Plot Graphs' - This allows you to plot graphs of the frequencies of bases, amino acids and codons. Further information is on the 'Plot Graphs' page.

Other Menu Buttons

'Search for Species Names' - If you have forgotten the name of a species, type in a fragment of its name (either latin or common).

'Gene Order Information' - This allows you to search the database by gene order, to produce a list of known gene orders, and to calculate a matrix of breakpoint or inversion distances between gene orders.

'Genome Comparison' - This produces a graphical comparison of the genomes of any two selected species, using colour to show the positions of each block of consecutive genes.

'Gene Alignments' - Some sequence alignments can be downloaded.

'Links' - Contains links to other related web sites.