Database
The PhenoGen Informatics website: tools for analyses of complex traits
-
* Corresponding author: Boris Tabakoff boris.tabakoff@uchsc.edu
1 Department of Pharmacology, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
2 Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
3 MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London W12 0NN, UK
4 US Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Portland, Oregon 97239, USA
5 Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, 855 Monroe Avenue, Memphis, TN 38163, USA
BMC Genetics 2007, 8:59 doi:10.1186/1471-2156-8-59
Published: 30 August 2007Abstract
Background
With the advent of "omics" (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and phenomics), studies can produce enormous amounts of data. Managing this diverse data and integrating with other biological data are major challenges for the bioinformatics community. Comprehensive new tools are needed to store, integrate and analyze the data efficiently.
Description
The PhenoGen Informatics website http://phenogen.uchsc.edu webcite is a comprehensive toolbox for storing, analyzing and integrating microarray data and related genotype and phenotype data. The site is particularly suited for combining QTL and microarray data to search for "candidate" genes contributing to complex traits. In addition, the site allows, if desired by the investigators, sharing of the data. Investigators can conduct "in-silico" microarray experiments using their own and/or "shared" data.
Conclusion
The PhenoGen website provides access to tools that can be used for high-throughput data storage, analyses and interpretation of the results. Some of the advantages of the architecture of the website are that, in the future, the present set of tools can be adapted for the analyses of any type of high-throughput "omics" data, and that access to new tools, available in the public domain or developed at PhenoGen, can be easily provided.