Biological Networks Discovery
The Division of Biomedical Informatics assists investigators at Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation and the University of Cincinnati with analyzing lists of differentially expressed genes for biological significance. We can help you to navigate the variety of public databases with information about genes and gene products. We also offer custom-built tools that help researchers in discovering biological networks. For example, our CisMols Analyzer is designed to identify significant cis-regulatory elements from sets of co-expressed or related groups of genes.
Another form of analysis we offer is enrichment analysis, which can rapidly identify specific ontology, pathway or disease/phenotype terms enriched in a particular gene list and the broad biological or pathophysiological themes associated with that list. This type of analysis also helps in identifying particular genes of interest from a very large list of potential targets.
We also assist in the task of building and visualizing the potential interactions between gene products, leveraging databases of published literature. This type of analysis allows researchers to uncover potential novel interactions between genes identified as being differentially expressed by their microarray research.
Available services include:
- Cis-regulatory network identification
- Protein network discovery
- Biomedical ontology mapping
- Disease network discovery (disease/phenotype mapping)
- Gene ontology mapping
- Pathway mapping
Getting Started
To use our public web-based software, simply launch an application. In some cases, you may need to register for a free account in order to perform advanced analysis.
To request other services or to inquire about grant collaboration, contact Anil Jegga or Bruce Aronow (contact information below or to the right) to set up a free consultation. During this consultation, we will discuss your experimental goals and the tools/experimental designs necessary to provide analysis. We also will determine any analysis exceeding the basic comparative analysis and gene listing provided with the use of our software. Based on the project's scope, we will determine any costs for the type of analysis you are requesting. More extensive grant development and collaboration support is also available.
Our involvement here is designed to lead to co-authorship on publications, submissions for grant-funded research, and/or the grant itself. Support written into the grant is expected to include funding of one bioinformatics full-time employee, 5-20% funding for a bioinformatics PI, and 20-40% funding for a postdoctoral fellow or graduate student.
Contact Us
For more information about biological networks discovery at Cincinnati Children's, contact Bruce Aronow, PhD, at 513-636-0263 or bruce.aronow@cchmc.org, or Anil Jegga, DVM, at 513-636-0261 or anil.jegga@cchmc.org.
