title: GPFrontend and GPGraphics: graphical analysis tools for genetic association studies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Most software packages for whole genome association studies are non-graphical, purely text based programs originally designed to run with UNIX-like operating systems. Graphical output is often not intended or supposed to be performed with other command line tools, e.g. gnuplot.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Using the Microsoft .NET 2.0 platform and Visual Studio 2005, we have created a graphical software package to analyze data from microarray whole genome association studies, both for a DNA-pooling based approach as well as regular single sample data. Part of this package was made to integrate with GenePool 0.8.2, a previously existing software suite for GNU/Linux systems, which we have modified to run in a Microsoft Windows environment. Further modifications cause it to generate some additional data. This enables GenePool to interact with the .NET parts created by us. The programs we developed are GPFrontend, a graphical user interface and frontend to use GenePool and create metadata files for it, and GPGraphics, a program to further analyze and graphically evaluate output of different WGA analysis programs, among them also GenePool.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our programs enable regular MS Windows users without much experience in bioinformatics to easily visualize whole genome data from a variety of sources.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Schwabachanlage 10, 91054 Erlangen, Germany.
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Uebe
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pasutto
authors.forename: Mandy
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krumbiegel
authors.forename: Denny
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schanze
authors.forename: Arif B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Ekici
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Reis
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D016678:Genome; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface