title: Storing, linking, and mining microarray databases using SRS.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  SRS (Sequence Retrieval System) has proven to be a valuable platform for storing, linking, and querying biological databases. Due to the availability of a broad range of different scientific databases in SRS, it has become a useful platform to incorporate and mine microarray data to facilitate the analyses of biological questions and non-hypothesis driven quests. Here we report various solutions and tools for integrating and mining annotated expression data in SRS.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We devised an Auto-Upload Tool by which microarray data can be automatically imported into SRS. The dataset can be linked to other databases and user access can be set. The linkage comprehensiveness of microarray platforms to other platforms and biological databases was examined in a network of scientific databases. The stored microarray data can also be made accessible to external programs for further processing. For example, we built an interface to a program called Venn Mapper, which collects its microarray data from SRS, processes the data by creating Venn diagrams, and saves the data for interpretation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SRS is a useful database system to store, link and query various scientific datasets, including microarray data. The user-friendly Auto-Upload Tool makes SRS accessible to biologists for linking and mining user-owned databases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Urology, Josephine Nefkens Institute, Erasmus MC, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands. antoine@b2bdsl.nl
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Veldhoven
authors.forename: Don
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: de Lange
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Smid
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: de Jager
authors.forename: Jan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Kors
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Jenster
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003625:Data Collection; D030562:Databases, Protein; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface