GExplore: a web server for integrated queries of protein domains, gene expression and mutant phenotypes.
BACKGROUND
The majority of the genes even in well-studied multi-cellular model organisms have not been functionally characterized yet. Mining the numerous genome wide data sets related to protein function to retrieve potential candidate genes for a particular biological process remains a challenge.


METHODS
GExplore has been developed to provide a user-friendly database interface for data mining at the gene expression/protein function level to help in hypothesis development and experiment design. It supports combinatorial searches for proteins with certain domains, tissue- or developmental stage-specific expression patterns, and mutant phenotypes. GExplore operates on a stand-alone database and has fast response times, which is essential for exploratory searches. The interface is not only user-friendly, but also modular so that it accommodates additional data sets in the future.


CONCLUSIONS
GExplore is an online database for quick mining of data related to gene and protein function, providing a multi-gene display of data sets related to the domain composition of proteins as well as expression and phenotype data. GExplore is publicly available at: http://genome.sfu.ca/gexplore/
Hutter
Harald
H
Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. hutter@sfu.ca
Ng
Man-Ping
MP
Chen
Nansheng
N
D030541:Databases, Genetic; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D023281:Genomics; D020407:Internet; D009154:Mutation; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010641:Phenotype; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012984:Software; D013045:Species Specificity; D013997:Time Factors
D011506:Proteins