Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In addition to locally generated clinical and genetic data, the typical pharmacogenomic laboratory has
access to data in private and public online databases. Ideally, subsets of often-used data are
integrated with local data in the laboratory's data warehouse, making the data readily available for
searching, statistical analysis, visualization, simulation, and communications. In addition to
homogenizing and standardizing data representations through a data dictionary, the data warehouse
serves as the central repository for the laboratory's intellectual property that can be easily archived.
Although separate archives are typically maintained for genomic and clinical systems, an additional
archive of the central data warehouse provides assurance that the data that have been cleaned,
reformatted, indexed, and otherwise enhanced in value aren't lost to human error or natural disaster.
As illustrated in
Table 2-3
, the applications typically used to manipulate and analyze genomic data
range from sequence searching to visualization. For example, researchers can upload new sequence
data to the major databases through applications such as AceDB, Audit, BankIt, Sakura, Sequin, or
WebIN. Most laboratories have access to these and similar applications through the Internet, as well
as a suite of internally developed and commercial applications.
Table 2-3. Genomic Applications. A variety of public and private applications
are available for analysis of genomic data, many of which are designed to
work on the large public databases. Listed here are publicly funded
applications.
