Software
Web-based interrogation of gene expression signatures using EXALT
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* Corresponding author: Yajun Yi yajun.yi@vanderbilt.edu
- † Equal contributors
1 Translational Medicine Group, Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology, Shanghai, 200235, China
2 Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232-0275, USA
3 Cancer Research Institute and Human Morphology Center, University of South China, Hengyang, 421001, China
4 Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232-0275, USA
5 Institute for Integrative Genomics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37232-0275, USA
BMC Bioinformatics 2009, 10:420 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-10-420
Published: 14 December 2009Abstract
Background
Widespread use of high-throughput techniques such as microarrays to monitor gene expression levels has resulted in an explosive growth of data sets in public domains. Integration and exploration of these complex and heterogeneous data have become a major challenge.
Results
The EXALT (EXpression signature AnaLysis Tool) online program enables meta-analysis of gene expression profiles derived from publically accessible sources. Searches can be executed online against two large databases currently containing more than 28,000 gene expression signatures derived from GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) and published expression profiles of human cancer. Comparisons among gene expression signatures can be performed with homology analysis and co-expression analysis. Results can be visualized instantly in a plot or a heat map. Three typical use cases are illustrated.
Conclusions
The EXALT online program is uniquely suited for discovering relationships among transcriptional profiles and searching gene expression patterns derived from diverse physiological and pathological settings. The EXALT online program is freely available for non-commercial users from http://seq.mc.vanderbilt.edu/exalt/ webcite.