Sequencing centers such as the Human Genome Center at LBNL are producing an 
ever-increasing flood of genetic data. Annotation can greatly enhance the 
biological value of these sequences. Useful annotations include possible gene 
locations, homologies to known genes, and gene signal such as promoters and 
splice sites. Genotator is a workbench for automated sequence annotation and 
annotation browsing. The back end runs a series of sequence analysis tools on a 
DNA sequence, handling the various input and output formats required by the 
tools. Genotator currently runs five different gene-finding programs, three 
homology searches, and searches for promoters, splice sites, and ORFs. The 
results of the analyses run by Genotator can be viewed with the interactive 
graphical browser. The browser displays color-coded sequence annotations on a 
canvas that can be scrolled and zoomed, allowing the annotated sequence to be 
explored at multiple levels of detail. The user can view the actual DNA sequence 
in a separate window; when a region is selected in the map display, it is 
highlighted automatically in the sequence display, and vice versa. By displaying 
the output of all of the sequence analyses, Genotator provides an intuitive way 
to identify the significant regions (for example, probable exons) in a sequence. 
Users can interactively add personal annotations to label regions of interest. 
Additional capabilities of Genotator include primer design and pattern 
searching.