Dfam 1.2 released

We are pleased to announce that we’ve released Dfam 1.2. This version represents a few important changes from 1.1, including increased sensitivity for many families, a new plot on the model page, and an improved Relationships tab.

Dfam paper is an NAR “featured article”; RepeatMasker4 is out

We are pleased to announce that the Dfam paper (“Dfam: a database of repetitive DNA based on profile hidden Markov models“) is now available in the 2013 NAR Database issue, and has been selected as a “featured article“ (meaning the NAR editorial board thinks it is among “the top 5% of papers in terms of originality, significance and scientific excellence”).

In other exciting news, two members of the Dfam consortium, Arian Smit and Robert Hubley (Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle), just released RepeatMasker 4.0. This is a major update that, among other important improvements, adds support for searching with Dfam and nhmmer. Go get yourself a copy at 
http://www.repeatmasker.org/

Posted by Travis

Dfam 1.1 released

We are pleased to announce that we’ve released Dfam 1.1. This version represents a few important changes from 1.0, including updated hit results, a new tab for each entry page showing relationships to other entries, and improved handling of redundant profile hits.

Dfam: A database of repetitive DNA elements

We are pleased to introduce Dfam 1.0, a database of profile HMMs for repetitive DNA elements. Repetitive DNA, especially the remnants of transposable elements, makes up a large fraction of many genomes, especially eukaryotic. Accurate annotation of these TEs both simplifies downstream genomic analysis and enables research into their fascinating biology and impact on the genome.