UCSC Genome Browser turns 25

[Luis Nassar]

July 7th marks the 25th anniversary of the human genome going online and the start of the UCSC Genome Browser. Our visualization journey began when Jim Kent wrote the Intronerator, which displayed regions of C. elegans. This was the foundation for the UCSC Genome Browser as we know it today, and decades later, we are proud to continue serving our ever-growing user base.

So, how has the Browser evolved over the years?

• We now have 165k monthly users and 1.5M users per year
• The project is now comprised of three million lines of code
• We have responded to over 15k mailing questions from our users
• The Genome Browser’s data exchange formats, like bigBed and track hubs have become industry standards, allowing other software like IGV to build their tooling upon our data

With each year's user growth, the Genome Browser has become increasingly critical to research over time. A recent Nature article shared some examples from users of the Genome Browser for the 25-year anniversary. See our history page if you would like to learn more about the project's past.