Lelandais Gaëlle, Marc Philippe, Vincens Pierre, Jacq Claude, Vialette Stéphane
Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire CNRS UMR8541, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 75230 Cedex 05, France.
BMC Bioinformatics. 2004 Mar 3;5:20. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-5-20.
Information obtained by DNA microarray technology gives a rough snapshot of the transcriptome state, i.e., the expression level of all the genes expressed in a cell population at any given time. One of the challenging questions raised by the tremendous amount of microarray data is to identify groups of co-regulated genes and to understand their role in cell functions.
MiCoViTo (Microarray Comparison Visualization Tool) is a set of biologists' tools for exploring, comparing and visualizing changes in the yeast transcriptome by a gene-centric approach. A relational database includes data linked to genome expression and graphical output makes it easy to visualize clusters of co-expressed genes in the context of available biological information. To this aim, upload of personal data is possible and microarray data from fifty publications dedicated to S. cerevisiae are provided on-line. A web interface guides the biologist during the usage of this tool and is freely accessible at http://www.transcriptome.ens.fr/micovito/.
MiCoViTo offers an easy-to-read picture of local transcriptional changes connected to current biological knowledge. This should help biologists to mine yeast microarray data and better understand the underlying biology. We plan to add functional annotations from other organisms. That would allow inter-species comparison of transcriptomes via orthology tables.
通过DNA微阵列技术获得的信息给出了转录组状态的大致概况，即任何给定时间在细胞群体中表达的所有基因的表达水平。大量微阵列数据引发的一个具有挑战性的问题是识别共同调控基因的组群并了解它们在细胞功能中的作用。
MiCoViTo（微阵列比较可视化工具）是一套以基因为中心的方法来探索、比较和可视化酵母转录组变化的生物学家工具。一个关系数据库包含与基因组表达相关的数据，图形输出使得在现有生物学信息的背景下很容易可视化共表达基因的簇。为此，可以上传个人数据，并且在线提供了来自五十篇关于酿酒酵母的出版物的微阵列数据。一个网络界面在使用该工具时为生物学家提供指导，可通过http://www.transcriptome.ens.fr/micovito/免费访问。
MiCoViTo提供了与当前生物学知识相关的局部转录变化的易于阅读的图景。这应该有助于生物学家挖掘酵母微阵列数据并更好地理解潜在的生物学。我们计划添加来自其他生物体的功能注释。这将允许通过直系同源表进行转录组的种间比较。
