“PowerAtlas” Helps Geneticists

Newswise — A new online research tool, "PowerAtlas" [http://www.poweratlas.org], has been developed by UAB scientists as a storehouse of information for genetics researchers, potentially saving them time and money in performing microarray studies. Such studies allow researchers to simultaneously assess thousands of genes to determine which ones are being expressed in response to a given treatment. Details about PowerAtlas were recently published in the journal BMC Bioinformatics. "A researcher can upload his or her own pilot data and be given an appropriate sample size based on the information," said Grier Page, Ph.D., UAB associate professor of public health and the study's lead author. "It is a very powerful tool that allows meaningful interpretations of large amounts of data in a much more economical and time-friendly manner."