Online Software for Genetics

May 26, 2014

Ph.D. student Sagi Abelson Microarray analysis—a complex technology commonly used in many applications such as discovering genes, disease diagnosis, drug development and toxicological research—has just become easier and more user-friendly. A new advanced software program called Eureka-DMA provides a cost-free, graphical interface that allows bioinformaticians and bench-biologists alike to initiate analyses, and to investigate the data produced by microarrays. The program was developed by Ph.D. student Sagi Abelson of the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel.

DNA microarray analysis, a high-speed method by which the expression of thousands of genes can be analyzed simultaneously, was invented in the late 1980s and developed in the 1990s. Genetic researchers used a glass slide with tiny dots of copies of DNA to test match genes they were trying to identify. Because the array of dots was so small, it was called a “microarray.”

There is a strong correlation between the field of molecular biology and medical research, and microarray technology is used routinely in the area of cancer research and other epidemiology studies. Many research groups apply it to detect genetic variations between biological samples and information about aberrant gene expression levels can be used in what is called “personalized medicine.”  

3D render of DNA
Kjpargeter/Shutterstock.com “Eureka-DMA combines simplicity of operation and ease of data management with the rapid execution of multiple task analyses,” says Abelson. “This ability can help researchers who have less experience in bioinformatics to transform the high throughput data they generate into meaningful and understandable information.”

Eureka-DMA has been tested on a number of data sets in order to assess the program’s capability to deliver meaningful and relevant biological insights regarding the analyzed data. Eureka-DMA software is freely available for academic users.

Source: Excerpts of an article from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology