March 15, 2018 (Vol. 38, No. 6)
URL:
http://bgee.org
Rating:
Strong Points: Large number of species included, freely downloadable data
Weak Points: Some analyses not currently available
Summary:
The Bgee database by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics offers a nice resource to compare gene-expression patterns across different organisms, with 29 species represented in total. The gene-expression data come in four different flavors: in situ hybridization, RNA-seq, Affymetrix, and Expressed Sequence Tag data, though not all data types are present for all species. From the home page, site visitors can browse the data by species, which are graphically displayed using photo icons. Clicking on a species thumbnail reveals the gene-expression analyses that are available. The analyses include calls for the presence/absence of gene expression based on anatomical entity and/or developmental stage, as well as an over/under-expression analysis that allows comparison of relative levels of gene expression. Unfortunately, the website is a work in progress and the over/under-expression analysis is not currently available. Despite this limitation, the gene-expression presence/absence data can be freely downloaded, as can processed gene-expression values for the various datasets across species.
