Introduction

WebACT is a web-based implementation of the Artemis Comparison Tool (ACT) allowing display of up to five-way BLAST comparisons of any publicly available prokaryotic genome This is achieved in real time as all of the available bacterial genome sequences, and the comparisons between all of these sequences, are stored in a database at the WebACT site. The region of comparison to be displayed can be selected on the basis of:

• Full sequence region
• regions specified by base co-ordinates
• region flanking a named gene

Sequence comparisons can be generated ‘on the fly’ by:

• querying the EMBL database using sequence identifers
• uploading sequence files in EMBL or FASTA formats
• Pasting sequences in EMBL or FASTA formats

All comparisons can be viewed online through a version of ACT that allows comparisons to be viewed directly from the website using Java Web Start.

All pre-computed genome comparison files, and user-generated files, are also available to download for viewing using the stand-alone version of ACT. Small ‘session’ files are also available which can be emailed to colleagues allowing them to view your sequence comparison via WebACT.

WebACT was developed and is located at Imperial College London and the project is a collaboration between the Bioinformatics Support Service and the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology.

For further instructions regarding the use of ACT please visit the Sanger Institute homepages:

The ACT website can be found here: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Software/ACT/

The Artemis website can be found here: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Software/Artemis/