About neuroMiner
Global gene expression studies have provided new insights into the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. A hallmark of the scientific process is the reproducibility of published outcomes, and yet comparing the results of microarray studies has proven difficult. Although experimental results of global gene expression measuring may identify common genes, each research group will typically produce different list of statistically significant differentially expressed genes, which calls into question the reliability and validity of each gene list. There are two general approaches to integrating microarray studies: meta-analysis of the primary data by merging data from multiple studies, and comparative analysis of the published results (i.e., gene lists).
The application of conventional meta-analysis to raw microarray data is complicated by differences in the type of microarray used, gene nomenclatures, species, and analytical methods. An alternative approach to combining multiple microarray studies is to compare the published gene lists. However, manual combining data from published gene lists is often a very tedious and time-consuming task. In order to address these issues, we have developed a web-based platform, called neuroMiner to house and integrate the results of published microarray experiments from selected neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Multiple sclerosis, and Down syndrom). neuroMiner allows researchers to compare the results of similar studies in order to identify consistent expression patterns, as well as helping experimenters to compare their own data to published microarray results.
neuroMiner is distributed under the GNU General Public License, which means that its source code is freely-distributed and available to the general public.
Currently under heavy development!