Design and implementation of integrated system for microarray data

As DNA microarrays are widely used recently, the amount of microarray data is exponentially increasing. Until now, however, no domestic system is available for the efficient management of such data. Because the number of experimental data in a specific laboratory is limited, it is necessary to avoid redundant experiments and to accumulate the results using a shared data management system for microarrays. In this paper, a system named WEMA (WEb management of MicroArrays) was designed and implemented to manage and process the microarray data. WEMA system was designed to include the basic feature of MIAME (Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment), and general data units were also defined in the system in order to systematically manage the data. The WEMA system has three main features: efficient management of microarray data, integration of input/ouput data, and metafile processing. The system was tested with actual microarray data produced by a molecular biology laboratory, and we found that the biologists could systematically manage and easily analyze the microarray data. As a consequence, the researchers could reduce the cost of data exchange and communication.