The University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Genome Browser is a popular 
Web-based tool for quickly displaying a requested portion of a genome at any 
scale, accompanied by a series of aligned annotation "tracks." The 
annotations-generated by the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group and external 
collaborators-display gene predictions, mRNA and expressed sequence tag 
alignments, simple nucleotide polymorphisms, expression and regulatory data, 
phenotype and variation data, and pairwise and multiple-species comparative 
genomics data. All information relevant to a region is presented in one window, 
facilitating biological analysis and interpretation. The database tables 
underlying the Genome Browser tracks can be viewed, downloaded, and manipulated 
using another Web-based application, the UCSC Table Browser. Users can upload 
data as custom annotation tracks in both browsers for research or educational 
use. This unit describes how to use the Genome Browser and Table Browser for 
genome analysis, download the underlying database tables, and create and display 
custom annotation tracks.