Located at Genoscope - the French National Sequencing Center - our bioinformatic team ( Atelier de Génomique Comparative ) has developed the MicroScope platform to support microbial genomes (re)annotation projects; it is made of three major components (Vallenet et al., 2006) :

• A set of syntactic and functional annotation tools.
• A relational database, Prokaryotic Genome DataBase, (PkGDB) which is linked to metabolic pathway databases (MicroCyc) created using the Pathway Tools software.
• A graphical interface, Magnifying Genome (MaGe), which allows to perform relevant expert annotation (combinaison of synteny results and metabolic network predictions).

The access to the MicroScope web platform is available upon request :

• Priority is given to the bacterial genomes being sequenced at Genoscope - Depending on our workload, collaborations are also set up for genomes produce in other sequencing centers (Pasteur Institute, DOE, etc).