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Welcome To BioDAS.org

About DAS

The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) defines a communication protocol used to exchange biological annotations. It is motivated by the idea that annotations should not be provided by single centralized databases, but instead be spread over multiple sites. Data distribution, performed by DAS servers, is separated from visualization, which is done by DAS clients.

DAS is a client-server system in which a single client integrates information from multiple servers. It allows a single machine to gather up genome annotation information from multiple distant web sites, collate the information, and display it to the user in a single view. Little coordination is needed among the various information providers.

DAS is heavily used in the genome bioinformatics community. Over the last years we have also seen growing acceptance in the protein sequence and structure communities.

What can I do with DAS ?

A number of sites and applications is available that are using DAS.

• IGB: http://genoviz.sourceforge.net

• Gbrowse: http://www.gmod.org/gbrowse_installation

• Ensembl: http://www.ensembl.org/info/data/external_data/das/ensembl_das.html

• Spice: http://www.efamily.org.uk/software/dasclients/spice/

• Dasty: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/das-srv/uniprot/dasty/content?ID=:dis=BioSapiens

• Dasty2: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~rafael/pre_dasty2/

• Jalview: http://www.jalview.org

• PeppeR: http://biocomp.cnb.uam.es/das/PeppeR/

The Protocol

Currently there are two versions of the DAS protocol

DAS/1

DAS/1 is the original version of the specification written by Lincoln Stein and Robin Dowell and is the basis for a number of existing clients and servers. More than 200 DAS/1 servers are currently running worldwide including WormBase, FlyBase, Ensembl, TIGR, UCSC, and UniProt. For a listing of all available DAS sources please proceed to http://www.dasregistry.org

DAS/2

DAS/2 is the latest version of the DAS specification and builds on the capabilities of the original DAS/1 spec. See the DAS/2 page for more information.

Mailing Lists

Just so we don't create confusion over DAS/1 vs. DAS/2 issues, there are separate discussion lists for issues related to these very different versions of the spec. For general discussions, use the DAS/2 list.

DAS/1 Discussion list

• Post to: das@biodas.org
• Listinfo: http://biodas.org/mailman/listinfo/das

DAS/2 Discussion list

• Post to: das2@biodas.org
• Listinfo: http://biodas.org/mailman/listinfo/das2

DAS Announcements

• Listinfo: http://biodas.org/mailman/listinfo/das-announce

DAS FAQ

See the DasFAQ page for some frequently asked questions.

CVS Access

See DAS/2#CVS Access for CVS access information to various aspects of the DAS/2 development effort.

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