Incogen this week announced the second beta release of VIBE-Ed, an educational version of its VIBE (Visual Integrated Bioinformatics Environment) platform. The release includes several improvements that allow users to “very quickly learn the terminology and the fundamentals of bioinformatics while using the software,” the company said in a statement. VIBE-Ed now includes a glossary and a user feedback system to help guide students through the process of creating a bioinformatics workflow, running it, and then interpreting the results. VIBE-Ed will be beta-tested at several universities, including the California Institute of Technology, the University of Delaware, the University of Nebraska, and the College of William and Mary. The company said that it is interested in recruiting more beta sites to use the software in the classroom free of charge. Additional information is available here.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information has released Fungal Genomes Central, a web portal to information and resources about fungi and fungal sequencing projects. NCBI has also released human genome build 36.2 with updated annotation and RefSeq 19, which includes 4,311,543 records and 2,879,860 proteins and sequences from 3,744 different organisms.
The Allen Institute for Brain Science has completed the Allen Brain Atlas, a web-based, three-dimensional map of gene expression in the mouse brain. The Atlas, which includes data on 21,000 genes at the cellular level, is available here.
The Molecular Graphics Lab of the Scripps Research Institute has released version 1.4.3 of MGLTools, a software suite for 3D visualization and analysis of molecular structures. The release includes PMV (Python Molecule Viewer); ADT (AutoDockTools), which includes five specialized modules for PMV; and VISION (Visual Programming Environment), an advanced environment in which Python-based object-oriented components can be coupled together to create new applications. MGLTools is available here.
The University of Colorado has released Theseus 1.0.2. The software, a Unix command-line program for performing maximum likelihood superpositions and analysis of macromolecular structures, is available here.