Development of a Maize Molecular Evolutionary Genomic Database

PANZEA is the first public database for studying maize genomic diversity. It was initiated as a repository of genomic diversity for an NSF Plant Genome project on ‘Maize Evolutionary Genomics’. PANZEA is hosted at the Bioinformatics Research Center, North Carolina State University, and is open to the public (http://statgen.ncsu.edu/panzea). PANZEA is designed to capture the interrelationships between germplasm, molecular diversity, phenotypic diversity and genome structure. It has the ability to store, integrate and visualize DNA sequence, enzymatic, SSR (simple sequence repeat) marker, germplasm and phenotypic data. The relational data model is selected and implemented in Oracle. An automated DNA sequence data submission tool has been created that allows project researchers to remotely submit their DNA sequence data directly to PANZEA. On-line database search forms and reports have been created to allow users to search or download germplasm, DNA sequence, gene/locus data and much more, directly from the web.