Press Release from Electric Genetics Corporation

  August 2003

Electric Genetics Corporation eVokes Bioinformatics Industry
Company Releases Expression Ontology Toolkit

Electric Genetics Corporation (EG), comprising a U.S.-based headquarters and a South Africa-based R&D arm, has announced the release of the eVoke™ gene expression ontology toolkit/solution.

eVoke is quickly earning acceptance, seeing key genome researchers around the world rapidly adopting its ontologies as industry standard for describing gene expression states. The only peer-reviewed, published human expression ontology broadly available, eVoke's ontologies are presently incorporated into Ensembl, and have been adopted by Genome Knowledgebase. Efforts are currently underway to link them to the widely used Gene Ontology (GO).

"The increasingly high-profile ontologies arena is a complex space", stated Tania Broveak Hide, Electric Genetics' CEO. "eVoke captures this complexity with simple queries, allowing illustration of the intricacy of the problem, but in a simple, easy to understand fashion. With researchers across the globe rushing to solve the ontologies challenge, eVoke serves to simplify both human and computer processes through the provision of clear, untangled hierarchies inherent in the product-setting the standard for linking experimental data with consistent terms that provide insight into phenotype in a way that can be easily understood and interpreted by researchers in all disciplines."

Further, eVoke is designed to ensure intuitive and rapid integration into existing bioinformatics systems. The integration of eVoke with the company's flagship transcript reconstruction and variation analysis tool, stackPACK™, creates significant impact for scientists by enabling them to do more complex queries with respect to gene expression analysis and annotation.

"The essence of eVoke is reflected in the core values under which it was created: Standard, Simple, Powerful, Easily Integrated, Functional, Flexible and Customizable," concluded Broveak Hide.

A D D I T I O N A L   P R O D U C T   I N F O R M A T I O N

eVOKE INCLUDES:

• Hierarchical, untangled ontologies describing expression states.
• Mapping of vocabulary terms to an increasing number of biological data resources related to gene expression.
• Clone libraries, ESTs and SAGE tags currently mapped with full-length transcripts and genes coming soon.
• Monthly curated updates of ontologies and mappings, with more frequent updates available upon request.
• Intuitive software system for rapidly mining eVoke data.
• Customer support for one year by phone, fax or e-mail.

USING eVOKE , SCIENTISTS CAN:

• Query gene expression in the same way that you query gene function with GO, the controlled vocabulary provided by the Gene Ontology Consortium.
• Catalogue transcript data in terms of simple hierarchical ontologies representing key expression state classifications such as anatomical system, pathology, developmental stage or cell type.
• Rapidly isolate data relevant to your research by constructing straightforward, flexible queries across any or all of these classification domains -- for example, the accession numbers of all ESTs expressed in non-cancerous tissue in the liver of adults -- with just a few simple keystrokes.
• Uncover relationships between the gene expression states of public - or even private - ESTs and clone libraries.
• Standardize the descriptions of your transcript data using terms adopted by projects such as Ensembl and the Genome Knowledgebase and listed by organisations such as the Microarray Gene Expression Data society (MGED) and the Standards and Ontologies for Functional Genomics (SOFG).
• Rely on up-to-date, ongoing classification of the expression state of public EST and clone library data.
• Turn to trusted experts to classify your proprietary transcript data or to develop ontologies to describe the organisms you study.

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS:

• Windows 2000/XP
• Linux Red Hat 9.0

COMING SOON:

• Silicon Graphics
• Irix
• Sun Solaris
• Apple OS X
• HP Tru64
• Unix
• IBM AIX

DOCUMENTATION:
eVoc: A Controlled Vocabulary for Unifying Gene Expression Data: Genome Research 2003 13:1222-1230

EDITORS NOTE:

About Electric Genetics
Electric Genetics Corporation (EG), formed in 1997, is headquartered in Virginia, with a New Jersey-based sales force that stretches across the U.S. The company's R&D arm, Electric Genetics Pty. Ltd., is based in Cape Town, South Africa.

EG is acknowledged for its commitment to customer support and service, counting many of the world's leading biotech companies as clients. These principles have helped the company develop solid revenue streams through its world-class software products.

The company develops and markets robust bioinformatics tools and services that enhance the understanding of genomic information and accelerate the drug discovery process. These tools empower life scientists across a wide range of disciplines, facilitating close collaborations with top commercial and academic research groups such as Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, as well as budding research institutions such as the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town.

Bioinformatics is the meeting of biotechnology and information technology through the use of computers to store, retrieve, analyze or predict the composition and/or structure of bio molecules. Bioinformatics aims to shorten the process of discovering new drugs, thereby reducing the costs and risks involved in new drug development.

<< Back to Press Releases