The numbers of finished and ongoing genome projects are increasing at a rapid rate, and providing the catalog of genes for these new genomes is a key challenge. Obtaining a set of well-characterized genes is a basic requirement in the initial steps of any genome annotation process. An accurate set of genes is needed in order to learn about species-specific properties, to train gene-finding programs, and to validate automatic predictions. Unfortunately, many new genome projects lack comprehensive experimental data to derive a reliable initial set of genes.