Jin, K. et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 40, 687–694 (2012).

Performing genetic analysis in budding yeast is often hard given the fact that about one-fifth of its genes are essential for the viability of the organism. To overcome this, researchers use strains expressing temperature-sensitive alleles of essential genes, and large collections of such yeast strains have been generated. Using genetically engineered fluorescent markers and high-throughput microscopy Jin and colleagues analyzed the phenotypes of many cells with these mutations and put this information to the service of the community. They announce an online database—called PhenoM for 'phenomics of yeast mutants'—that contains quantitative single-cell measurements extracted from micrographs of almost two million cells and for 775 temperature-sensitive mutants spanning 491 different essential genes. PhenoM can be used to store, retrieve, visualize and data-mine this dataset, and it is freely available at http://phenom.ccbr.utoronto.ca/.