Introduction

Dasty3 is a web client for visualizing protein sequence feature information using DAS. Through the DAS registry the client establishes connections to a DAS reference server to retrieve sequence information and to one or more DAS annotation servers to retrieve feature annotations. It merges the collected data from all these servers and provides the user with a unified, aesthetically pleasing, effective view of the sequence-annotated features. Dasty3 uses AJAX to deliver highly interactive graphical functionality in a web browser by executing multiple asynchronous DAS requests.

Technically, Dasty3 is web-browser compatible, lightweight, independent from third party software, easy to integrate into other web based systems, efficient when loading and manipulating annotations, highly configurable and customizable, and interactive and intuitive for users. By being web-based, it is more readily accessible to biological researchers, as they do not need to install specialized software to run it. Being JavaScript-based, it is easy for developers to integrate it into their own web systems. Customizability aids this. The use of AJAX improves efficiency when displaying information. Finally, because of its independence from large, complicated third-party libraries and its modularity, Dasty3 is easy to extend.

Visually, Dasty3 provides numerous advantages over other DAS clients. Space is used effectively so there is no need to scroll in portions of the screen. It makes use of the standard colours employed by Uniprot and SRS for annotations. Dasty3 uses colours, borders, complimentary shades and separating lines to contrast features with the background and to make the relationships among annotations clear. Finally, Dasty3 allows grouping and sorting of annotations by various properties, and zooming within a protein sequence.