Apollo 3 Genome Annotation Editor - Beta Release

[garrettjstevens]

Thank you to all those who have shown an interest in Apollo 3, our tool for collaborative genome annotation.Due to Apollo 3’s flexible client-server architecture, there are a few different ways you can use it, both single-user to collaborative, and using demo servers or configuring your own data. We would like to introduce four different ways you can try out Apollo, ranging from taking a quick look to provisioning a full multi-user installation.

How to try it out

1. Quick-look demo

To quickly see what Apollo looks like and get a basic idea of its functionality, visit this link:

Try Apollo now!

Log in either as a guest or use a Google account.

The genome annotation database you see when you open this link represents a small slice of a genome stored directly in your JBrowse session. This genome database is not collaborative: anything you change is limited to your current browsing session and is only visible to you. Anything you do on this genome won't affect anyone else's experience, so feel free to experiment however you like. If you want to start fresh again without any of your changes, you can open the original link again.

2. Full demo

If you want to explore some larger genome annotation databases that are collaborative (meaning any changes you make will be visible to other users), there are a few other genomes loaded on our demo server.

Click the link given in the quick-look demo above, go to the "Add" menu and choose "Linear genome view," choose either "Schistosoma haematobium" or "Schistosoma mansoni," and click "Open". To see the Apollo track, open the track selector and choose the "Annotations" track.

3. Running Apollo on your own computer

If you'd like to try setting up Apollo yourself, either with data we provide or with your own data, this tutorial on our website walks you through setting up an Apollo instance that runs on your own computer, with all the steps for configuring the server and loading data. This is a great way to test Apollo out before doing a full multi-user installation

4. Deploy a multi-user Apollo instance to a server

Our
deployment guide walks you through installing a fully-featured multi-user Apollo instance on a server, allowing you to take advantage of Apollo's collaborative features to annotate your own genomes.

What's next?

We have a lot of plans for user interface improvements to make annotating easier. The official Apollo website is apollo.jbrowse.org, where you can find all the docs and announcements, including periodic new features and releases.

We welcome questions in our discussion forum and bug reports on GitHub.

Best wishes, The Apollo Team

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This discussion was created from the release Apollo 3 Genome Annotation Editor - Beta Release.