Ensembl 95 has been released

The latest version of Ensembl, release 95, is out. This release brings a brand new human regulatory build for GRCh37 and GRCh38, incorporating new data from the ENCODE and Roadmap epigenomics project, plus an update to the mouse GENCODE gene set. We've also got a whole host of new vertebrate species, updated genome assemblies for some important agricultural species and the brand new protein structure viewer.

New Regulatory Build

Ensembl 95 sees the first update to the human regulatory build since 2016. The Ensembl regulatory build uses experimental data to predict features that regulate gene expression, such as promoters, enhancers and transcription factor binding sites. The annotation of these regulatory features is based upon a wide variety of data produced from the Blueprint epigenome project, the Roadmap epigenomics project and the ENCODE project.

Since the last update to the regulatory build in Ensembl, the data available through the ENCODE portal has been continually growing and the new regulatory build incorporates data for 55 new and 38 updated epigenomes.

New assemblies and gene annotation

• Updated mouse geneset, bringing us to GENCODE M20.
• Nine new vertebrate genomes: donkey, polar bear, American black bear, red fox, koala, dingo, tuatara, painted turtle and Agassiz's desert tortoise.
• New genome assemblies for three important agricultural species: chicken (GRCg6a), cow (ARS-UCD1.2) and horse (EquCab3.0).

Protein structure viewer

We've also added a new protein structure view. The PDBe Protein Structure viewer uses a LiteMol widget to visualise data from PDBe. These structures are available for more than 3700 Ensembl transcripts. Using the control panel and available options you can select different PDBe protein structures to view as well as highlighting exons, protein domains from Pfam or Gene3D and variants coloured by SIFT or Polyphen-2 scores.

Find out more

If you would like to find out more about these new changes, see live demos on how to find new data in the site, and ask questions to the Ensembl team, please register for the release webinar at 4pm (GMT) on Wednesday 16th January. A recording of this webinar will be available on our YouTube channel.

You can also read about all the latest updates in the Ensembl blog.