Essential genes are those indispensable for the survival of an organism, and therefore are considered a foundation of life. DEG hosts records of currently available essential genomic elements, such as protein-coding genes and non-coding RNAs, among bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. Essential genes in a bacterium constitute a minimal genome, forming a set of functional modules, which play key roles in the emerging field, synthetic biology. To perform BLAST search against DEG, users have 4 options:
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