[2][3][4] It is an interactive website offering access to genome sequence data from a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species and major model organisms, integrated with a large collection of aligned annotations.

The Browser is a graphical viewer optimized to support fast interactive performance and is an open-source, web-based tool suite built on top of a MySQL database for rapid visualization, examination, and querying of the data at many levels.

Initially built and still managed by Jim Kent, then a graduate student, and David Haussler, professor of Computer Science (now Biomolecular Engineering) at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2000, the UCSC Genome Browser began as a resource for the distribution of the initial fruits of the Human Genome Project.

Today the browser is used by geneticists, molecular biologists and physicians as well as students and teachers of evolution for access to genomic information.

High coverage is necessary to allow overlap to guide the construction of larger contiguous regions.

The large amount of data about biological systems that is accumulating in the literature makes it necessary to collect and digest information using the tools of bioinformatics.

Designed for the presentation of complex and voluminous data, the UCSC Browser is optimized for speed.

A convenient drag-and-zoom feature allows the user to choose any region in the genome image and expand it to occupy the full screen.

The Genome Graphs tool allows users to view all chromosomes at once and display the results of genome-wide association studies (GWAS).