Abstract:

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and other projects provide informative tumor-associated genomic data for the broad research community. Hence, several useful web-based tools have been generated to ease non-expert users with the analysis and characterization of a specific gene behavior in selected tumors. However, none of the existing tools offer the user the means to evaluate the expression profile of a given gene in the context of the whole transcriptome. Currently, such analyses require prior bioinformatic knowledge and expertise. Therefore, we developed GENI (Gene ENrichment Identifier) as a fast, user-friendly tool to analyze the TCGA expression data for gene set enrichments. GENI analyzes large-scale tumor-associated gene expression datasets and evaluates biological relevance, thus offering researchers a simplified means to analyze cancer patient-derived data.