BMC Genomics 2009, 10(Suppl 3):S7 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/10/S3/S7 Availability and requirements The software MP-PBmice is freely available at http:// www.idmshanghai.cn/PBmice. For other information, please contact the corresponding author. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions WY, JK, and XX designed the architecture of the system. XX, DL, JY and LW designed and implemented the database and all functionalities of the whole system. WY organized the implementation and edited the user guide. YZ, NG, and LS directed the project. YZ conceived the structure of this paper. LS wrote the paper in collabora- tion with all of the other authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Note Other papers from the meeting have been published as part of BMC Bioinformatics Volume 10 Supplement 15, 2009: Eighth International Conference on Bioinfor- matics (InCoB2009): Bioinformatics, available online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10? issue=S15. Acknowledgements This research was supported by grants from Chinese Key Projects for Basic Research (973) (Grant No. 2006CB806700, and 2002CB512801), Hi-tech Research and Development Project (863) (Grant No. 2007AA022102), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University, Shanghai Leading Academic Discipline Project under Grant Nos. B114 and B111, and AMD University Cooperation Project. We thank Dr. Yun Zheng and the software development group of IDM for technical assistance and constructive reading of the manuscript, research groups involved in the PB project for system testing, Drs. Tian Xu, Min Han, Yuan Zhuang, and Xiaohui Wu for help in needs-analysis and management. 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