Web-based Tools for the Analysis of DNA Microarrays

DNA microarrays are widely used for gene expression profiling. Raw data resulting from microarray experiments, however, tends to be very noisy and there are many sources of technical variation and bias. This raw data needs to be quality assessed and interactively pr eprocessed to minimise variation before statistical analysis in order to achieve meaningful result. Therefore microarray analysis requires a combination of visualisation and statistical tools, which vary depending on what microarray platform or experimental design is used.Bioconduc tor is an existing open source software project that attempts to facilitateanalysis of genomic data. It is a collection of packages for the s tatistical programminglanguage R. Bioconductor is particularly useful in analyzing microarray experiments. Theproblem is that the R programmi ng languages command line interface is intimidating tomany users who do not have a strong background in computing. This often leads to asitu ation where biologists will resort to using commercial software which often usesantiquated and much less effective statistical techniques, as well as being expensivelypriced. This project aims to bridge this gap by providing a user friendly web-basedinterface to the cutting edge st atistical techniques of Bioconductor.