RNA_Seq Viewer: A Mobile App for Displaying NGS Gene Expression Data

摘要

In recent years, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology has dramatically advanced genome researches and biomedical sciences, which generates and accumulates a large amount of biological data rapidly. Nowadays, there is a rapid expansion of tablets and smart phone devices, replacing the traditional personal computers and notebooks commonly used for information retrieval and display. However, there are little bioinformatic related mobile applications developed specifically for NGS data visualization on mobile devices. To demonstrate the feasibility of displaying large NGS data using the mobile devices, we designed and implemented a new iOS App - the RNA_Seq Viewer, for the visualization of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) gene expression datasets. This iOS App could efficiently display gene expression information systematically over the human chromosome framework. We have processed over 2,500 human cancer patients in nine cancer types retrieved from the TCGA web site. This mobile App could be potentially utilized in future personalized medicine applications by serving as the essential visualization core component to easily access the personal genomic and medical information through the cloud based data warehouses.