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Welcome To BioDAS.org

About DAS

The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) defines a communication protocol used to exchange biological sequence annotations. It is motivated by the idea that such annotations should not be provided by single centralized databases, but should 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 sequence 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 ?

Here are some examples of DAS-enabled websites and applications:

• 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/dasty/

• 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 (or commonly "DAS") is the original version of the specification written by Lincoln Stein, Sean Eddy, and Robin Dowell. It is widely adopted and well supported, particularly throughout Europe, and is the basis for a large number of existing clients and servers. Though mature, the protocol continues to be extended to cater for the needs of the DAS community.

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 the DasRegistry http://www.dasregistry.org

DAS/2

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

DAS workshop

A workshop on DAS will be held in February 2008 at the Genome Campus in Hinxton / Cambridge U.K. This is an opportunity for newbies to learn about DAS and for the more experienced to exchange ideas and present their latest developments.

Mailing Lists

See BioDAS:Community_Portal

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.

Contribute to this Wiki

Want to contribute to the Wiki? please see some beginners instructions at the WikiGetStarted page.