Technical Note
Recent developments in StemBase: a tool to study gene expression in human and murine stem cells
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* Corresponding author: Miguel A Andrade-Navarro miguel.andrade@mdc-berlin.de
1 Ottawa Health Research Institute, 501 Smyth Road, Ottawa, ON K1H 8L6, Canada
2 Max-Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Robert Rössle Str. 10, 13125 Berlin, Germany
BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:39 doi:10.1186/1756-0500-2-39
Published: 10 March 2009Abstract
Background
Currently one of the largest online repositories for human and mouse stem cell gene expression data, StemBase was first designed as a simple web-interface to DNA microarray data generated by the Canadian Stem Cell Network to facilitate the discovery of gene functions relevant to stem cell control and differentiation.
Findings
Since its creation, StemBase has grown in both size and scope into a system with analysis tools that examine either the whole database at once, or slices of data, based on tissue type, cell type or gene of interest. As of September 1, 2008, StemBase contains gene expression data (microarray and Serial Analysis of Gene Expression) from 210 stem cell samples in 60 different experiments.
Conclusion
StemBase can be used to study gene expression in human and murine stem cells and is available at http://www.stembase.ca webcite.