FlyAtlas 2013 (flyatlas2013.org) allows users to explore the way that different genes are expressed in the tissues of Drosophila melanogaster. It is based on hybridizing tissue mRNA to microarrays representing the Drosophila genome — work performed in the Dow/Davies laboratory in the University of Glasgow. It presents a different interface from that on the original FlyAtlas site, which is still available.

SEARCH TYPES

Gene: For a particular gene, find details of its expression in different tissues.

Category: For a group of genes with related functions, find details of their expression in different tissues.

Profile: For a particular gene, find others with a similar pattern of expression in different tissues.

Tissue: For a given tissue, find the genes of a particular category with the greatest expression.

Top: For a given tissue, find the genes that are most highly expressed there (e.g. ‘top 20’).

Development: For a given tissue, find genes that change in expression between larva and adult.

INTERPRETING RESULTS

One feature of FlyAtlas 2013 is that it addresses a particular limitation of microarrays: the fact that some probe-sets are ‘ambiguous’ — they detect more than one gene. In addition, certain genes are detected by more than one probe-set — so-called ‘duplicates’. These are indicated by circled letters ‘A’ or ‘D’ (with explanatory tool tips) in the results, but for more extensive explanation the user is directed to the ‘Docs’ .

AUTHORSHIP

The experimental work underlying this web application was originally described in a paper by Venkat Chintapalli, Jing Wang and Julian Dow in Nature Genetics .

The web application itself was built by Scott W. Robinson and David P. Leader, and is described in a paper in the Database issue of Nucleic Acids Research for 2013.

FLY ATLAS 2

Gene information in FlyAtlas 2013 includes a link to FlyAtlas 2. That is our later site presenting data based on RNA-Seq, rather than microarrays, with separate determinations for male and female flies. (Not all genes are represented in both data sets.)