Database Commons

a catalog of worldwide biological databases

Legumes have contributed to human health, sustainable food and feed production worldwide for centuries. The study of model legumes has played vital roles in deciphering key genes, pathways, and networks regulating biological mechanisms and agronomic traits. Along with emerging breeding technology such as genome editing, translation of the knowledge gained from model plants to crops is in high demand. The updated database (V3) was redesigned for translational genomics targeting the discovery of novel key genes in less-studied non-model legume crops by referring to the knowledge gained in model legumes. The database contains genomic data for all 22 included species, and transcriptomic data covering thousands of RNA-seq samples mostly from model species. The rich biological data and analytic tools for gene expression and pathway analyses can be used to decipher critical genes, pathways, and networks in model legumes. The integrated comparative genomic functions further facilitate the translation of this knowledge to legume crops. Therefore, the database will be a valuable resource to identify important genes regulating specific biological mechanisms or agronomic traits in the non-model yet economically significant legume crops. LegumeIP V3 is available free to the public at https://plantgrn.noble.org/LegumeIP. Access to the database does not require login, registration, or password.

The LegumeIP 2.0 database hosts large-scale genomics and transcriptomics data and provides integrative bioinformatics tools for the study of gene function and evolution in legumes. Our recent updates in LegumeIP 2.0 include gene and protein sequences, gene models and annotations, syntenic regions, protein families and phylogenetic trees for six legume species: Medicago truncatula, Glycine max (soybean), Lotus japonicus, Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean), Cicer arietinum (chickpea) and Cajanus cajan (pigeon pea) and two outgroup reference species: Arabidopsis thaliana and Poplar trichocarpa. Moreover, the LegumeIP 2.0 features the following new data resources and bioinformatics tools: (i) an integrative gene expression atlas for four model legumes that include 550 array hybridizations from M. truncatula, 962 gene expression profiles of G. max, 276 array hybridizations from L. japonicas and 56 RNA-Seq-based gene expression profiles for C. arietinum. These datasets were manually curated and hierarchically organized based on Experimental Ontology and Plant Ontology so that users can browse, search, and retrieve data for their selected experiments. (ii) New functions/analytical tools to query, mine and visualize large-scale gene sequences, annotations and transcriptome profiles. Users may select a subset of expression experiments and visualize and compare expression profiles for multiple genes. The LegumeIP 2.0 database is freely available to the public at http://plantgrn.noble.org/LegumeIP/. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

Legumes play a vital role in maintaining the nitrogen cycle of the biosphere. They conduct symbiotic nitrogen fixation through endosymbiotic relationships with bacteria in root nodules. However, this and other characteristics of legumes, including mycorrhization, compound leaf development and profuse secondary metabolism, are absent in the typical model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We present LegumeIP (http://plantgrn.noble.org/LegumeIP/), an integrative database for comparative genomics and transcriptomics of model legumes, for studying gene function and genome evolution in legumes. LegumeIP compiles gene and gene family information, syntenic and phylogenetic context and tissue-specific transcriptomic profiles. The database holds the genomic sequences of three model legumes, Medicago truncatula, Glycine max and Lotus japonicus plus two reference plant species, A. thaliana and Populus trichocarpa, with annotations based on UniProt, InterProScan, Gene Ontology and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases. LegumeIP also contains large-scale microarray and RNA-Seq-based gene expression data. Our new database is capable of systematic synteny analysis across M. truncatula, G. max, L. japonicas and A. thaliana, as well as construction and phylogenetic analysis of gene families across the five hosted species. Finally, LegumeIP provides comprehensive search and visualization tools that enable flexible queries based on gene annotation, gene family, synteny and relative gene expression.