The marker gene sets for cell types are collected directly from publications describing mainly single-cell, and selected bulk RNA-seq or microarray experiments.

Each marker gene set has extensive cell type, anatomical structure and disease annotations as described in the publication.

All marker gene sets are harmonized to a common gene nomenclature and assigned standardized ontologies for cell type, tissue and disease.

All cell types signatures are scored for reliability based on their similarity to other signatures of the same cell type.

Canonical markers used in reference publications for cell type annotation are included.

Our custom rank-based search algorithm finds the best matching cell type signatures in the database for fast and accurate cell type annotations.