Genomic rearrangement and disease LARaLINK 2.0: Datamining for clinical cytogenetics

A growing pool of genomic data is being archived to online public databases. These have the potential to impact both the diagnosis of genetically linked diseases as well as to aid in defining their genesis. The current in-silico tools for cytogenetic analysis have generally been targeted to the academic and industrial communities for use in research into the origins of disease. In comparison, few tools have been developed to integrate the multiple online resources for the clinical setting. We have addressed this deficit through a web-delivered application, LARaLINK 2.0: Loci Analysis for Rearrangements Link version 2.0 http://LARaLINK.bioinformatics.wayne.edu:8080/unigene controlled hierarchical vocabulary for mining cDNA and microarray expression data. This tool now provides researchers and clinicians with the means to effectively use cytogenetic data to rapidly assess disease association. The investigator is delivered a defined set of candidate disease genes together with the supporting evidence for their expression and disrupted phenotypes.