Annotathon
The Annotathon is a dedicated online bioinformatics training environment. Trainees are invited to annotate metagenomic DNA fragments added to their personnal sequence cart from various oceanic locations (Global Ocean Sampling project by Venter et al.). The analyses include the detection of potential coding regions, the search for sequence homologs and identification of conserved protein domains, as well as the reconstruction of phygenetic trees.
The Annotathon is designed to manage large trainee cohorts grouped into teams (such as students following the same course) supervised by instructors. Each sequence annotation produced by trainees is examined, commented on and evaluated by instructors twice. This allows trainees to revise their initial annotations, thus improving their bioinformatics skills. After the team closing date, trainee evaluations are compiled into an overall grade.
You wish to join in?
Students taking a course running an Annotathon team
You are invited to open an account in your course's specific team (e.g. BioCell2007) using the "Create New Account" tab on the online Annotathon portal.
Teachers who wish to lead an Annotathon student team
If you teach and wish to create a team for your students, you will find all necessary instructions in the Annotathon Instructor Manual.
Freelance volunteer annotator
You are invited to open an account in the "Open Access" team using the "Create New Account" tab on the online Annotathon portal.
Annoucements & discussion group
To keep up to date with Annotathon news, check the Annotathon discussion group
Contact us
Send an email to the Annotathon team
Useful links
- Online Annotathon portal
- User guide: Annotathon Rule book
- Bioinformatics tools howto: Frequently Asked Questions
- Resulting public annotated sequences: Metagenes
Languages
The Annotathon is currently available in English & French. Offers to translate the interface in further languages are warmly welcomed! All language specific terms are externalized in a language file (currently around 700 terms and sentences); our experience shows that translation by a fluent speaker should take no more than a day (including the student "Rule Book").
Authors
The Annotathon concept was imagined by the Marseilles bioinformatics lecturing team:
- Pascal Hingamp, Emmanuel Talla, Denis Thieffry & Carl Herrmann (Université de la Méditerranée / Luminy Sciences Faculty)
- Céline Brochier (Université de Provence / Life Sciences Faculty)
- Daniel Gautheret (now at Université Paris Sud / Orsay)
The open source software is developed by Pascal Hingamp.
