All you need to know about genetic mapping

Abstract

For those experienced in statistical genetics and genetic mapping this is an excellent resource.

Content

For those experienced in statistical genetics and genetic mapping this is an excellent resource. The home page links to three different FTP sites offering genetic mapping and linkage analysis programs, and the program documentation link summarizes what they do and how to use them. Human and rat linkage maps with detailed marker information are viewable chromosome by chromosome, and there is a human expressed sequence tag (EST) map also featuring genetic marker locations. Information on bacterial, P1 and yeast artificial chromosome (BAC, PAC and YAC) libraries for both human and rat is given, along with some useful protocols on how to transfect and make reporter constructs from BACs and PACs. This site seems to have links to every other site you will ever need if this is your field.

Navigation

Navigation is straightforward, but not all the subsequent pages have a home page icon, making it harder to return to earlier options.

Reporter's comments

Timeliness

Although the home page said the last update was 10 November 1999, some parts of the site had been updated in December 1999. Some pages had not been touched since 1996; maybe in these cases there has been nothing to add.

Best feature

This site is so well connected. Almost every page has multiple links to other relevant and really useful sites.

Worst feature

When I visited this site a number of the links within the Genomics area were inoperative. Also, some of the links from the home page simply contain descriptions of work ongoing at the centre. Some of the data tables that accompany the linkage maps are not very well set out and extra table formatting here would help.

Wish list

A home page icon on all the internal pages would be great.

Related websites

The European Bioinformatics Institute has further sequence database searching and analysis tools.

Table of links

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics

The European Bioinformatics Institute