The Generic Model Organism System Database Project (GMOD) seeks to develop and release reuseable software components for model organism system databases. Here we describe the Generic Genome Browser (GBrowse), a web-based application for displaying genomic annotations. For the end user, features of the browser include the ability to scroll and zoom through arbitrary regions of a genome, to enter a region of the genome by search for a landmark, full text search of all annotations, the ability to enable and disable tracks and change their relative order and appearance, the ability to upload private annotations and view them in the context of the public ones, and the user's ability to publish his own annotations to the community. For the data provider, features of the browser software include reliance on readily-available Open Source components, simple installation, flexible configuration, and easy integration with other components of a model organism system web site.

GBrowse is written in the Perl programming language and makes extensive use of the BioPerl middleware layer. This gives the browser the flexibility to take advantage of a number of underlying databases and data sources, including ones based on the Distributed Annotation System (DAS). For new developers, GBrowse uses a minimal MySQL-based database called Bio::DB::GFF. Developers requiring a richer database back end can use the GadFly database, an outgrowth of the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Sequencing project.

GBrowse is currently used as the genome browser for the WormBase (www.wormbase.org) and FlyBase (www.flybase.org) projects. Its source code, example data and configuration files, and support are all available at the GMOD web site, http://www.gmod.org/.