August | 2010 | NextBio's Blog

Monthly Archives: August 2010

Five More Questions you can answer using NextBio’s New Body Atlas

Posted on August 18, 2010 by NextBio. Filed under Case Studies

Last week, we offered five questions you could answer using NextBio’s lastest new application, the Body Atlas. This week we have five more:

#6. Do you know how your favorite gene’s expression compares in cancer cell line models compared to the normal cell type counterpart for a given cancer?

Example: Microseminoprotein-beta (MSMB), a known tumor suppressor in prostate cancer is over 500-fold less in each of the six prostate cancer cell-lines displayed compared to its expression in either the prostate gland as a whole or in luminal cells of the prostate.

#7. If your favorite gene is suspected to play a role in a cancer type, how does its expression compare across all popular cell line models for that cancer? And which might be the best model in which to study it based on its expression level?

Five Questions you can answer using NextBio’s New Body Atlas

Posted on August 11, 2010 by NextBio. Filed under Case Studies

NextBio’s lastest new application is the Body Atlas which allows you to perform gene, bioset and biogroup queries against three panels of tissues: Normal Tissues, Normal Cell Types and Cancer Cell Lines. All told, that’s a survey of over 600 different comparisons displayed in easy-to-interpret graphics. Here are just some of the insights the Body Atlas can offer:

#1. How variable is my favorite gene’s expression? Is it tissue-specific or ubiquitously expressed?

Example: GAPDH is a ubiquitously expressed gene showing a gradual decline across a ranking of all tissues. Microseminoprotein-beta (MSMB), on the other hand, is tissue-specific; it is expressed in about five different tissues, including those of lung and prostate gland, and it appears off in most other tissues.

#2. Can a nice graphic of my favorite gene’s expression be depicted for my presentation? Yes, it can.

Example: The figure generated below shows MSMB expression in six selected tissues from the Normal Tissues panel. To generate a similar figure for your favorite gene, use the checkboxes in the right column of results to add a tissue to a graphic, and then download the .png version by clicking the ‘Export Graph’ button.
Read more…