A Web-based System for Phenotypic and Genotypic Data Integration and Exploration
Angelo Nuzzo, Alberto Riva and
Riccardo Bellazzi
This paper describes the use of Information Technology
methods and tools to develop a system for the management,
inspection and integration of phenotypic and genotypic data. We
extended the functionalities of a previously-developed software
system, the Phenotype Miner, enabling it to retrieve genotype information
from external repositories and to relate it to phenotypic
data. For this purpose we developed two additional components:
a module to allow customized data upload by the user, and a
SOAP-based communications layer to retrieve data from existing
biomedical knowledge management tools. Here we present a
description of the new modules, and an example application of
the system in which we analyze two related genomic datasets, in
order to show how a comprehensive, integrated and automated
workbench can facilitate and improve the hypothesis generation
process underlying modern genetic studies.
Index Terms
Web service, database query processing, genetics.