biology

Open Regulatory Annotation Database

Open Regulatory Annotation Database is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Open Regulatory Annotation Database rather than just read about it. In short: The Open Regulatory Annotation Database (also known as ORegAnno) is designed to promote community-based curation of regulatory information. Specifically, the database contains information about regulatory regions, transcription factor binding sites, regulatory variants, and haplotypes.

Key takeaways

Open Regulatory Annotation Database belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Open Regulatory Annotation Database to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Open Regulatory Annotation Database from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Open Regulatory Annotation Database (also known as ORegAnno) is designed to promote community-based curation of regulatory information. Specifically, the database contains information about regulatory regions, transcription factor binding sites, regulatory variants, and haplotypes. As of February 10, 2026, the project’s website (www.oreganno.org Archived 2021-03-21 at the Wayback Machine) was observed to be inaccessible, returning a connection timeout error.

Overview

Data Management For each entry, cross-references are maintained to EnsEMBL, dbSNP, Entrez Gene, the NCBI Taxonomy database and PubMed. The information within ORegAnno is regularly mapped and provided as a UCSC Genome Browser track. Furthermore, each entry is associated with its experimental evidence, embedded as an Evidence Ontology Archived 2007-08-15 at the Wayback Machine within ORegAnno. This allows the researcher to analyze regulatory data using their own conditions as to the suitability of the supporting evidence.

Software and data access The project is open source - all data and all software that is produced in the project can be freely accessed and used.

Database contents As of December 20, 2006, ORegAnno contained 4220 regulatory sequences (excluding deprecated records) for 2190 transcription factor binding sites, 1853 regulatory regions (enhancers, promoters, etc.), 170 regulatory polymorphisms, and 7 regulatory haplotypes for 17 different organisms (predominantly Drosophila melanogaster, Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Rattus norvegicus in that order). These records were obtained by manual curation of 828 publications by 45 ORegAnno users from the gene regulation community. The ORegAnno publication queue contained 4215 publications of which 858 were closed, 34 were in progress (open status), and 3321 were awaiting annotation (pending status). ORegAnno is continually updated and therefore current database contents should be obtained from www.oreganno.org Archived 2021-03-21 at the Wayback Machine.

RegCreative Jamboree 2006 The RegCreative jamboree was stimulated by a community initiative to curate in perpetuity the genomic sequences which have been experimentally determined to control gene expression. This objective is of fundamental importance to evolutionary analysis and translational research as regulatory mechanisms are widely implicated in species-specific adaptation and the etiology of disease. This initiative culminated in the formation of an international consortium of like-minded scientists dedicated to accomplishing this task. The RegCreative jamboree was the first opportunity for these groups to meet to be able to accurately assess the current state of knowledge in gene regulation and to begin to develop standards by which to curate regulatory information. In total, 44 researchers attended the workshop from 9 different countries and 23 institutions. Funding was also obtained from ENFIN, the BioSapiens Network, FWO Research Foundation, Genome Canada and Genome British Columbia. The specific outcomes of the RegCreative meeting to date are:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Open Regulatory Annotation Database

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Open Regulatory Annotation Database claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Open Regulatory Annotation Database before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Open Regulatory Annotation Database ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Open Regulatory Annotation Database

In research: Open Regulatory Annotation Database appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Open Regulatory Annotation Database in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Open Regulatory Annotation Database is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Biological databases, Gene expression, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Open Regulatory Annotation Database outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Open Regulatory Annotation Database in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Open Regulatory Annotation Database means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Open Regulatory Annotation Database out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Open Regulatory Annotation Database in simple terms?

Why does Open Regulatory Annotation Database matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Open Regulatory Annotation Database?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Open Regulatory Annotation Database.