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South Dakota State University professor Xijin Ge has received a $1.1 million grant from the to enhance , a widely used bioinformatics website for analyzing genomics data.

is a multidisciplinary field at the intersection of biology and computing that  help store, analyze and interpret biological data, like DNA sequences. 

The field of bioinformatics grew as scientists were able to collect massive amount of biological data at the molecular level. The goal of bioinformatics research is to uncover new insights into human health and biology, though the complexity presents significant challenges.

ShinyGO is a gene-set enrichment tool that bridges gene-level changes to biological pathways, thereby unraveling the complexity of biological systems. With the help of graduate students, Ge developed it between 2019 and 2020. It is intended to provide in-depth analysis of gene lists interactively. Its novel features include graphical visualization of enrichment, pathway, gene characteristics and protein interactions. It is particularly helpful for researchers without computational training.

"ShinyGO is a modern tool for an old bioinformatics problem," Ge said. "It's easy to use and has gene databases for 14,000 species, ranging from human to corn to E. coli."

In the world of bioinformatics research, ShinyGO has become a popular tool. Hosted at ³ÉÈËÊÓƵ, the website has been visited over 900,000 times by scientists across the world. The original article showcasing ShinyGO, which was published in the journal Bioinformatics in 2020, has been cited over 2,800 times.

"Our goal for this project is to fully develop ShinyGO, enhance its functionality, improve reproductivity and broaden the database," Ge explained. "This transforms it into a rigorous, robust and widely applicable tool."

Ge believes with enhanced capacity to interpret data, ShinyGO will facilitate future discoveries in various biological and medical research fields and will have an impact on thousands of researchers, particularly those with limited resources.

Currently, the site is maintained by Ge and Jianli Qi, a research associate in ³ÉÈËÊÓƵ's Department of Mathematics and Statistics. The website's server is managed by the Research Cyberinfrastructure (RCi) team at ³ÉÈËÊÓƵ, led by Kevin Brandt and Chad Julius.

Original support for ShinyGO was provided by the NIH, the National Science Foundation and the State of South Dakota.