NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have received a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create an interactive database of fruit fly gene expression.
Associate Professor Heng Huang and Professor Chris Ding in the UT Arlington Computer Science and Engineering Department hope that the database will result in new methods for analyzing Drosophila gene expression data that could be useful in a range of research disciplines, including systems biology, oncology, clinical pathology, and pharmaceuticals.
"We're building a system through which the computer will recognize what happens in these fruit fly genes and how the genes then interact with each other,” Huang said in a statement.
“Because so many of the genes involved in fruit fly development are found in humans and other species, finding out what these expressions are and how they work with each other is highly important," he said.