October 15, 2012 (Vol. 32, No. 18)
URL:
http://www.flyexpress.net
Rating:
Strong Points: GEM search very useful
Weak Points: Nothing major
Summary:
Researchers who work with Drosophila will no doubt be abuzz with excitement over FlyExpress, a wonderful resource for developmental biology research. It is composed of over 100,000 images depicting the expression patterns of over 4,000 genes at various time points during development of the organism. Users can search the digital library by gene name, PubMed ID, keyword, ontology, or image ID. Alternatively, one can take advantage of the nifty search feature based on Genomewide Expression Maps (GEMs). With this feature, users specify a developmental stage and then define (using their mouse) a spatial region within the GEM to search for genes that are expressed in that region at that time point. Users can also select multiple spatial coordinates, in which case the search results display genes expressed in either all or some number of the defined regions.