HomoloGene, a tool of the United States National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), is a system for automated detection of homologs (similarity attributable to descent from a common ancestor) among the annotated genes of several completely sequenced eukaryotic genomes.
Sequences are compared using blastp, then matched up and put into groups, using a taxonomic tree built from sequence similarity, where closer related organisms are matched up first, and then further organisms are added to the tree.
Cutoffs are made per position and Ks values are set to prevent false "orthologs" from being grouped together.
[2] "Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes, Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus, Canis lupus familiaris, Bos taurus, Gallus gallus, Xenopus tropicalis, Danio rerio" "Drosophila melanogaster, Anopheles gambiae, Caenorhabditis elegans" "Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Kluyveromyces lactis, Eremothecium gossypii, Magnaporthe grisea, Neurospora crassa" "Arabidopsis thaliana" "Oryza sativa" "Plasmodium falciparum".
The HomoloGene is linked to all Entrez databases and based on homology and phenotype information of these links: As a result, HomoloGene displays information about Genes, Proteins, Phenotypes, and Conserved Domains.