The Hematopoietic Expression Viewer: expanding mobile apps as a scientific tool

Area of Science:

• Biological science
• Bioinformatics
• Computational biology

Background:

• Biological science generates massive datasets requiring computational tools.
• Mobile applications offer efficient data interaction for scientists.
• Biologists, geneticists, and physicians can benefit from mobile data access.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a prototype mobile application for displaying gene expression data.
• To explore software engineering requirements for mobile biological data applications.
• To address the challenge of balancing local storage and dynamic data retrieval.

Main Methods:

• Developed a prototype app for iOS.
• Utilized the model-view-controller schema for software engineering.
• Applied the schema to query local microarray gene expression data.

Main Results:

• A prototype app for displaying gene expression data was successfully developed.
• The study reviewed software engineering requirements for iOS applications.
• The challenge of local vs. dynamic data storage was addressed.

Conclusions:

• Mobile apps are valuable tools for interacting with complex biological data.
• The developed prototype demonstrates the feasibility of mobile gene expression data viewing.
• Balancing local and network data storage is a key consideration for such applications.