Ensembl Genomes Release 3

We are pleased to announce the third release of EnsemblGenomes, which includes the first release of two new Ensembl-based portals, Ensembl Plants and Ensembl Fungi.

These complete the span of Ensembl Genomes portals across the taxonomic space, complementing the coverage of vertebrate genomes available through Ensembl.

• Ensembl Plants has been built in collaboration with Gramene and includes the genomes of six monocots and two dicots. Variation databases are available for four of these species.

• Ensembl Fungi includes a new build of the Sacchromyces cerevisiae genome using the latest data from SGD, including variation data derived from the Saccharomyces Genome Resequencing Project; and Ensembl databases for Schizosaccharomyces pombe (built in collaboration with GeneDB_Spombe) and eight species of Aspergillus (built in collaboration with the Central Aspergillus Database Repository, CADRE).

• User upload databases are now operational for Ensembl Protists, Fungi, Plants and Metazoa, allowing users to visualise their own data in the Ensembl environment.

Ensembl Genomes release 3 has been built using Ensembl 55 software. We aim to synchronise with Ensembl with our next release (Ensembl Genomes 4/Ensembl 57), and to stay synchronised thereafter.