The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a model of development biology with accumulated genetics knowledge. The 1995 Novel Prize Novel Prize was awarded to Eric Wieschaus and Chrisiane Nusslein-Volhard for their studies which have given a big momentum in the study of development. After the first release of the complete genomic sequence of Drosophila melanogaster was published in 2000, it started to walk into genome era. Recently with the emergence of high-throughput genome sequencers, whole genome level transcription study of fruit fly has become possible with high accuracy and precision.

However, despite the absence of prior knowledge of the locations of previously identified genes, the 5'-end SAGE method has demonstrated efficacy in cataloging high numbers of expressed genes. Following simple modification of adopting the recently developed high-throughput genome sequencer Solexa, we collected approximately 25 million 25-27nucleotide (nt) 5'-end mRNA tags from the embryos, larvae, young males, young females, old males, old females, and S2 (culture cell line) of D. melanogaster. By arranging this vast amount of expression tag with other annotated data, we have built this MachiBase as a one-stop service for Drosophila melanogaster transcription profiling.

• MachiBase: A Drosophila Melanogaster 5'-end mRNA Transcription Database. Budrul Ahsan (*), Taro L. Saito (*), Shin-ichi Hashimoto, Keigo Muramatsu, Manabu Tsuda, Atushi Sasaki, Kouji Matsushima, Toshiro Aigaki, Shinichi Morishita. Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol 32, Database Issue D49-D53. (* joint first authors)

• Budrul Ahsan 1
• Shin-ichi Hashimoto 2
• Keigo Muramatsu 3
• Manabu Tsuda 3
• Atsushi Sasaki 1
• Taro L. Saito 1,4
• Kouji Matsushima 2
• Toshiro Aigaki 3
• Shinichi Morishita 1,4

1. Department of Computational Biology, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-0882, Japan
2. Department of Molecular Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
3. Department of Biological Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan
4. Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Tokyo 102-8666, Japan