Miniature form transposable elements (mTEs) are ubiquitous in plant genomes and directly linked to gene regulation and evolution. With the advantage of completely sequenced genomes of Brassica rapa and Brassica oleracea, an open-source web portal called, BrassicaTED was developed. This database provides a user-friendly interface to explore invaluable information of mTEs in Brassica species and unique visualization and comparison tools. In this chapter, we describe an overview of this database construction and explain the utilities of data search, visualization, and analysis tools. In addition, we show the possible obstacles users may encounter when using this database.
Keywords: Brassica; K BLAST; Miniature form Transposable Elements (mTEs); Miniature inverted-repeat transposable element (MITE); Terminal-repeat retrotransposon in miniature (TRIM).