The highly efficient, fast and productive technologies of genomic studies enable the collection of overwhelming amounts of data. The primary genomic data types are DNA and protein sequences, genetic mapping data and data resulting from functional analysis. Much of the data are freely available to the public via the Internet and World-Wide-Web (WWW). Everybody benefits from public access to the genomic databases, but especially researchers with a small research budget who can still do efficient computer data analysis and gene discovery. The National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the USA and European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Europe are the primary sites for DNA sequence databases and DNA sequence analysis tools. The primary databases are called GenBank and EMBL. They also provide on-line access to the BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) programs, which are the primary tools used to search the databases and identify matches among sequences. The primary repository of forest tree genomic data is the TreeGenes Database that is maintained by the Dendrome Project at the Institute of Forest Genetics, Davis, California (http://dendrome.ucdavis.edu). TreeGenes contains a variety of data-types and is an object-oriented database that allows complex queries and searches. Through the use of databases and bioinformatic tools, it is possible to perform experiments in silico and begin to understand all the complex relationships among genes and how they work together to determine adaptive phenotype.
