CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Spotfire entered a deal last week to integrate its Spotfire Pro research and development decision support software with Affymetrix's GeneChip platform. The system is intended to permit life sciences researchers and bioinformatics professionals to graphically view and understand information generated with GeneChip expression monitoring arrays and stored in databases that comply with Genetic Analysis Technology Consortium (GATC) standards. The companies said that Spotfire Pro, a Windows-based application, gives laboratory scientists the power to access and manipulate information contained in GATC databases.
Spotfire also released Expression Explorer 1.0 this month, the third scientific component in the company's Spotfire Pro application. The gene expression data analysis tool is also compliant with GATC standards and can be applied to data in a standard Oracle database. The company claimed Expression Explorer enables scientists to instantly search GATC-compliant databases for gene expression data or information on selected experiments and then automatically clusters genes with similar traits or patterns of coregulation over time for closer examination.
GATC was founded in 1997 by Affymetrix and Molecular Dynamics to standardize the field of array-based genetic analysis. The consortium aims to provide a technology platform to design, process, read, and analyze genetic information from DNA arrays.