Integrating Gene Ontology classifications and experimental results within
Spotfire’s DecisionSite analytics environment
Donald S. Sullivan, Application Specialist, Spotfire, Inc. 212 Elm Street,
Somerville, MA 02144, www.spotfire.com
Spotfire’s Gene Onotology tool is targeted toward users who wish to
integrate hierarchical gene ontology information with experimental results within
Spotfire’s DecisionSite analytics environment. When faced with large data sets,
such as those generated from microarray experiments, researchers need to
integrate their experimental data with quality annotation information in order to
effectively analyze results. Using Gene Ontology in conjunction with
DecisionSite allows researchers to investigate relations between gene expression
patterns and biological processes and functions in a fast and effective way.
DecisionSite provides a powerful, dynamic, interactive visual environment for
manipulating, analyzing and querying data. The Gene Ontology tool makes it
easy to import gene ontology classifications, is intuitive to use and preserves the
hierarchical nature of the ontology information for both display and query. In
combination, Spotfire’s DecisionSite for Functional Genomics and Gene
Ontology tool provide a unique and powerful system for integrating, visualizing
and querying experimental data and gene ontology annotations within the same
environment.
Spotfire’s DecisionSite product has been widely adopted in the
pharmaceutical and biotech industries and has a growing user base in the
academic community. Spotfire’s DecisionSite for Functional Genomics module
provides simplified access to any expression data residing in files or in databases,
as well as simplified access to leading analytic methods, all within one interface.
The product lets users easily access, merge and analyze expression results while
adding current biological annotation information from any source including text
files, Excel™ or Oracle databases. We recognize the importance of developing a
gene ontology tool as a powerful option for working with annotation information.
We will demonstrate how the gene ontology information can be imported and
then linked to gene expression data and queried within the Spotfire environment.