Drupal.behaviors.print = function(context) {window.print();window.close();}>

Gene Expression Analysis with Apple's iOS

May 14, 2012

Gene Expression Analysis with Apple's iOS

The latest in a growing number of efforts aimed at exploiting mobile app technology for life sciences research, a group at Baylor College of Medicine has developed a prototype app for displaying gene expression data using Apple's iOS mobile operating system.

The group, led by Baylor's Chad Shaw, describe their new mobile "Hematopoietic Expression Viewer" app in a paper published online last week in the journal Bioinformatics.

On Shaw's website, the developers offer both the source code for users with Xcode — Apple's development environment — as well as a local distribution.

According to Shaw and his colleagues:

Many important data sets in modern biological science comprise hundreds, thousands, or more individual results. These massive data sets require computational tools to navigate results and effectively interact with the content. Mobile device apps are an increasingly important tool in the everyday lives of scientists and non-scientists alike. These software present individuals with compact and efficient tools to interact with complex data while at meetings or otherwise remote from their main computing environment. We believe apps will be important tools for biologists, geneticists and physicians to review content while participating in biomedical research or practicing medicine.

Here are some screen shots of the app:

      Matthew Dublin is a senior writer at Genome Technology.