Original article The Banana Genome Hub

Banana is one of the world’s favorite fruits and one of the most important crops for developing countries. The bananareference genome sequence (Musa acuminata) was recently released. Given the taxonomic position of Musa, the com-pleted genomic sequence has particular comparative value to provide fresh insights about the evolution of the monocoty-ledons. The study of the banana genome has been enhanced by a number of tools and resources that allows harnessing itssequence. First, we set up essential tools such as a Community Annotation System, phylogenomics resources and metabolicpathways. Then, to support post-genomic efforts, we improved banana existing systems (e.g. web front end, query builder),we integrated available Musa data into generic systems (e.g. markers and genetic maps, synteny blocks), we have madeinteroperable with the banana hub, other existing systems containing Musa data (e.g. transcriptomics, rice referencegenome, workflow manager) and finally, we generated new results from sequence analyses (e.g. SNP and polymorphismanalysis). Several uses cases illustrate how the Banana Genome Hub can be used to study gene families. Overall, with thiscollaborative effort, we discuss the importance of the interoperability toward data integration between existing informa-tion systems.Database URL: http://banana-genome.cirad.fr/