TELEBIOINFORMATICS SERVICES OF POLITECNICO DI MILANO FOR POST-GENOMIC BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

摘要

Molecular medicine is increasingly gaining relevance thanks to availability of the complete sequence of human genome and of new nanotechnology approaches in molecular biology that allows quickly studying thousands of genes simultaneously. Healthcare site are starting to provide several genetic tests, including genetic screenings of numerous genes simultaneously. Although such high-throughput tests can now be automatically or semi-automatically performed, efficient management and correct interpretation of produced data still present some issues. Here we present a set of telebioinformatics application services we developed at the BioMedical Informatics and Telemedicine Laboratory of Politecnico di Milano. They allow orderly collecting and managing test information and data, statistically analyzing produced data, easily gathering known information from several distributed genomic databanks about the relevant genes identified, and statistically evaluating such information with the aim to highlight information patterns that facilitate understanding fundamental biological processes and complex cellular mechanisms underlying patho-physiological phenotypes. All these telebioinformatics services are publicly available at http://www.bioinformatics.polimi.it/, where they are daily accessed by numerous users from all countries. In particular our GFINDer Web tool, which is currently the only tool available for performing genomic statistical analyses and data mining of phenotypic information, besides functional, of gene sets identified by high-throughput biomolecular tests.