GNOMICS: A one-stop shop for biomedical and genomic data

The World Wide Web is an indispensable tool for biomedical researchers who are striving to understand the molecular basis of phenotype. However, it presents challenges in the form of proliferation of data resources, with heterogeneity ranging from their content to functionality to interfaces. This often frustrates researchers who must visit multiple sites, become familiar with their interfaces, and learn how to use them to extract knowledge. Even then, one may never feel sure that they have tracked down all needed information. We envision addressing this challenge with GNOMICS (Genomic Nomenclature Omnibus and Multifaceted Informatics and Computational Suite), a suite with both a programmatic interface and a GUI. GNOMICS allows for extensible biomedical functionality, including identifier conversion, pathway enrichment, sequence alignment, and reference gathering, among others. It combines usage of other biological and chemical database application programming interfaces (APIs) to deliver uniform data which can be further manipulated and parsed.