title: TRUNCATULIX--a data warehouse for the legume community.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Databases for either sequence, annotation, or microarray experiments data are extremely beneficial to the research community, as they centrally gather information from experiments performed by different scientists. However, data from different sources develop their full capacities only when combined. The idea of a data warehouse directly adresses this problem and solves it by integrating all required data into one single database - hence there are already many data warehouses available to genetics. For the model legume Medicago truncatula, there is currently no such single data warehouse that integrates all freely available gene sequences, the corresponding gene expression data, and annotation information. Thus, we created the data warehouse TRUNCATULIX, an integrative database of Medicago truncatula sequence and expression data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The TRUNCATULIX data warehouse integrates five public databases for gene sequences, and gene annotations, as well as a database for microarray expression data covering raw data, normalized datasets, and complete expression profiling experiments. It can be accessed via an AJAX-based web interface using a standard web browser. For the first time, users can now quickly search for specific genes and gene expression data in a huge database based on high-quality annotations. The results can be exported as Excel, HTML, or as csv files for further usage.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The integration of sequence, annotation, and gene expression data from several Medicago truncatula databases in TRUNCATULIX provides the legume community with access to data and data mining capability not previously available. TRUNCATULIX is freely available at http://www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/truncatulix/.
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics Resource Facility, Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. khenckel@cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de
authors.forename: Kolja
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Henckel
authors.forename: Kai J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Runte
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bekel
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dondrup
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jakobi
authors.forename: Helge
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Küster
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Goesmann
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D046913:Medicago truncatula / Q000235:genetics*; D014584:User-Computer Interface