{"id":2543,"date":"2016-02-02T15:44:09","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T05:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/?post_type=wimr_news&p=2543"},"modified":"2024-09-30T18:26:26","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T08:26:26","slug":"app-makes-tracing-genetic-pathways-a-hop-skip-and-a-jump","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/news\/app-makes-tracing-genetic-pathways-a-hop-skip-and-a-jump\/","title":{"rendered":"App makes tracing genetic pathways a hop, skip and a jump"},"content":{"rendered":"

A student researcher from the Westmead Institute has developed a program which makes tracing genetic pathways easier and has the potential to assist in the development of new drug therapies for glaucoma.<\/p>\n

\"Genebunny
The Genebunny app helps researchers map genetic pathways<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Designed by Linda Feng from the Institute\u2019s Centre for Vision Research, the \u2018Genebunny\u2019 app can search large volumes of publications sourced from public databases and, via an algorithm, links the genetic influences. It then displays the links in a tree-like diagram on any smart device or personal computer.<\/p>\n

Linda, who has an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, says the program is easy to use and provides researchers from across disciplines with all-platform access to gene pathways, essentially speeding up genetic research.<\/p>\n

\u201cTracing genetic pathways can be difficult and time consuming,\u201d says Linda.\u00a0 \u201cWith the information explosion of the last decade or so, the literature you need to trawl through to make these connections can be massive. To jump from what seems like one unrelated thing to another completely different thing and then finally down to something that you want to link to the previous idea – that’s a big undertaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenebunny accelerates this process by mapping out genetic pathways quickly. Users simply define a start point and end point, which gives the program a sense of directionality. The program then goes through the interactions and forms links.\u201d<\/p>\n

Genebunny is highly customisable, and allows the user to choose the number of documents to be searched and the number of jumps or \u201chops\u201d they want displayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example,” says Linda, “If there are certain genes that you don\u2019t want to see, you can \u2018blacklist\u2019 them, which enables you to \u2018trim the tree down\u2019 until you get a rough area of what you want to see or the pathology or drug cascade that you are interested in.”<\/p>\n

According to Linda\u2019s supervisor, Dr Andrew White, the program is useful for generating ideas for future projects, and even has a role to play in developing drug therapies for glaucoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has helped us to define the most efficient pathways to test as we move towards developing a new drug therapy for glaucoma based on the personalised medicine model. Because Genebunny is so user friendly and intuitive, it assists us to better understand the genetic process behind this disease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cFurthermore, it can be mounted on any smartphone and is handy tool to take to conferences,” says Dr White. \u00a0“I have used it to show people genetic linkage in real time. It speeds up discussions considerably and gives me a flight of ideas for new projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there are other gene-mapping programs that can provide more detailed and robust results, Linda says they are often difficult to use and can be very expensive.<\/p>\n

Genebunny \u2013 named after the programs ability to \u201chop\u201d between points \u2013 may be easy to use but Linda says the program\u2019s flexibility has a downside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt comes with a warning: If you are not careful, you could just keep going and disappear down a rabbit hole.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student researcher from the Westmead Institute has developed a program which makes tracing genetic pathways easier and has the potential to assist in the development of new drug therapies for glaucoma. The Genebunny app helps researchers map genetic pathways   Designed by Linda Feng from the Institute\u2019s Centre for Vision Research, the \u2018Genebunny\u2019 app […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2544,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}}},"categories":[19],"class_list":["post-2543","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cat-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wimr.org.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}