Pashmina is the worlds’ most sought after natural fibre. It is produced by Cashmere/Pashmina goat (Capra hircus)- a double coated animal with an outer coat of long coarse guard hair and inner coat of shorter fine down/pashmina. Pashmina coat color genetics have always been an interesting yet unexplored area in animal fibre industry. Since, coat color is a price defining attribute of pashmina fibre, it is important to study the genetic make-up for making an effective selection scheme. In this web-portal we outlined significantly dysregulated genes from pairwise comparison of three principle coat colors found in Pashmina goat (black, white and brown). It offers verstile and flexible ways to display gene expression profiles by specifying a gene name (e.g., PMEL, TYR, ASIP),and its expression profiles across different conditions (coat colors) are displayed in bar plots along-with the gene annotation. To facilitate visualization of expression profiles, enriched GO terms and pathways interactive heatmaps, scatter-plots, and chord-graphs were used. This is the first effort for enhancing data visibility and understanding essential biological mechanisms underlying complex agronomic traits in pashmina goat.

PHP v5.6 and Perl v5.6 are used for server-side programming, MySQL v5.7 for data storage and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) for data retrieving from the database. The database has been thoroughly tested on the commonly available web-browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. It supports text query where user can input gene name in the search box. The search results present the information on level of gene expression in different coat colors, their function, pathway(s)-involved in, protein class, GO terms and protein-protein interaction network. The primary objective of the web repository is to provide important genetic information on color/pigmentation development in Pashmina fibre.