Homophila utilizes the sequence information of human disease genes from the NCBI OMIM (Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man) database in order to determine if sequence homologs of these genes exist in the current Drosophila sequence database (FlyBase). Sequences are compared using NCBI's BLAST program. The database is updated weekly and can be searched by human disease, gene name, OMIM number, title, subtitle and/or allelic variant descriptions.
This analysis is discussed in detail in the following publications:
Reiter LT, Potocki L, Chien S, Gribskov M, Bier E., "A Systematic Analysis of Human Disease-Associated Gene Sequences In Drosophila melanogaster," Genome Research 11:1114–1125, Cold Spring Harbor Labratory Press.
Chien S, Reiter LT, Bier E, Gribskov M., "Homophila: human disease gene cognates in Drosophila", Nucleic Acids Research, 2002, Vol. 30, No. 1 149-151
Tab delimited flatfiles are now available for download. See table below for links.
| OMIM entries having allellic variants | 2160 |
| OMIM entries having protein reference sequences | 2123 |
| H. sapiens reference sequences | 3101 |
| Protein sequences matched against D. melanogaster | Entire BLAST dataset E-value < 10-10 E-value < 10-50 E-value < 10-100 E-value < 10-200 |