title: HOMECAT: consensus homologs mapping for interspecific knowledge transfer and functional genomic data integration.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Comparative studies are encouraged by the fast increase of data availability from the latest high-throughput techniques, in particular from functional genomic studies. Yet, the size of datasets, the challenge of complete orthologs findings and not last, the variety of identification formats, make information integration challenging. With HOMECAT, we aim to facilitate cross-species relationship identification and data mapping, by combining orthology predictions from several publicly available sources, a convenient interface for high-throughput data download and automatic identifier conversion into a Cytoscape plug-in, that provides both an integration with a large set of bioinformatics tools, as well as a user-friendly interface.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  HOMECAT and the Supplementary Materials are freely available at http://www.cbmc.it/homecat/.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurological, Neuropsychological, Morphological and Motor Sciences, Section of Physiology, University of Verona, Strada le Grazie 8, 37134, Verona, Italy. simone.zorzan@univr.it
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zorzan
authors.forename: Erika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lorenzetto
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ettorre
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Pontelli
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Laudanna
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Buffelli
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D051379:Mice; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D051381:Rats; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration