Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Researchers Develop Powerful Interactive Tool to Mine Data from Cancer Genome

posted by martyb on Saturday January 02 2016, @10:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the thinking-of-the-children dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have developed a web application and data set that gives researchers worldwide a powerful interactive tool to advance understanding of the mutations that lead to and fuel pediatric cancer. The freely available tool, called ProteinPaint, is described in today's issue of the scientific journal Nature Genetics.

ProteinPaint provides users with a gene-by-gene snapshot of mutations from pediatric cancer that alters genetic instructions for encoding proteins. The application provides critical information unavailable with existing visualization tools. For example, ProteinPaint shows whether mutations are present at diagnosis or just at relapse, or whether mutations occur in almost every cell (germline) or just cancer cells (somatic).

ProteinPaint's novel interactive infographics also let researchers see at a glance all mutations in individual genes and their corresponding proteins, including detailed information about mutation type, frequency in cancer subtype and location in the protein domain. That information provides clues about how a change might contribute to cancer's start, progression or relapse.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Researchers Develop Powerful Interactive Tool to Mine Data from Cancer Genome | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 5 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @11:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @11:30AM (#284036)

    Been up 12 hours already and it's awfully quiet. Too bad there's not a preview of the tool anywhere (that might give us something to talk about).

    This is a pretty neat example of how modern tech can be used to solve serious problems (not just social media ones).

    "We developed ProteinPaint as an intuitive tool any scientist can easily use to explore the vast amount of information now available on cancer genomics."

    As in many fields, there is more data than insight; hopefully this and tools like this can help us maximize the value of the collected body of data.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @01:16PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @01:16PM (#284053)
      You can find the tool here [stjude.org], with a tutorial here [nature.com].

  • (Score: 1) by Bobs on Sunday January 03 2016, @02:15PM

    by Bobs (1462) on Sunday January 03 2016, @02:15PM (#284061)

    Here are details on the tool: https://pecan.stjude.org/home [stjude.org]

    Click on the "Play a Demo" link

    PeCan provides interactive visualizations of pediatric cancer mutations across various projects at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and its collaborators. Click on a disease in the sunburst chart below to get started!

    It looks to be quite well done.

  • (Score: 1) by Bobs on Sunday January 03 2016, @02:18PM

    by Bobs (1462) on Sunday January 03 2016, @02:18PM (#284062)

    After you run thru demo, you appear to have free, unlimited access to the tool here:

    https://pecan.stjude.org/proteinpaint/ [stjude.org]

    But to start you need the name of a gene to search for. Anybody know of a few good genes to use?

    • (Score: 1) by lc on Monday January 04 2016, @10:00AM

      by lc (4608) on Monday January 04 2016, @10:00AM (#284407)

      Try KRAS or EGFR?