Product Overview

Features

The Bioinformatics Toolbox™ product extends the MATLAB® environment to provide an integrated software environment for genome and proteome analysis. Scientists and engineers can answer questions, solve problems, prototype new algorithms, and build applications for drug discovery and design, genetic engineering, and biological research. An introduction to these features will help you to develop a conceptual model for working with the toolbox and your biological data.

The Bioinformatics Toolbox product includes many functions to help you with genome and proteome analysis. Most functions are implemented in the MATLAB programming language, with the source available for you to view. This open environment lets you explore and customize the existing toolbox algorithms or develop your own.

You can use the basic bioinformatic functions provided with this toolbox to create more complex algorithms and applications. These robust and well-tested functions are the functions that you would otherwise have to create yourself.

Toolbox features and functions fall within these categories:

  • Data formats and databases — Connect to Web-accessible databases containing genomic and proteomic data. Read and convert between multiple data formats.

  • High-throughput sequencing — Gene expression and transcription factor analysis of next-generation sequencing data, including RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq.

  • Sequence analysis — Determine the statistical characteristics of a sequence, align two sequences, and multiply align several sequences. Model patterns in biological sequences using hidden Markov model (HMM) profiles.

  • Phylogenetic analysis — Create and manipulate phylogenetic tree data.

  • Microarray data analysis — Read, normalize, and visualize microarray data.

  • Mass spectrometry data analysis — Analyze and enhance raw mass spectrometry data.

  • Statistical learning — Classify and identify features in data sets with statistical learning tools.

  • Programming interface — Use other bioinformatic software (BioPerl and BioJava) within the MATLAB environment.

The field of bioinformatics is rapidly growing and will become increasingly important as biology becomes a more analytical science. The toolbox provides an open environment that you can customize for development and deployment of the analytical tools you will need.

  • Prototype and develop algorithms — Prototype new ideas in an open and extensible environment. Develop algorithms using efficient string processing and statistical functions, view the source code for existing functions, and use the code as a template for customizing, improving, or creating your own functions. See Prototyping and Development Environment.

  • Visualize data — Visualize sequences and alignments, gene expression data, phylogenetic trees, mass spectrometry data, protein structure, and relationships between data with interconnected graphs. See Data Visualization.

  • Share and deploy applications — Use an interactive GUI builder to develop a custom graphical front end for your data analysis programs. Create standalone applications that run separately from the MATLAB environment.

Expected Users

The Bioinformatics Toolbox product is intended for computational biologists and research scientists who need to develop new algorithms or implement published ones, visualize results, and create standalone applications.

  • Industry/Professional — Increasingly, drug discovery methods are being supported by engineering practice. This toolbox supports tool builders who want to create applications for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

  • Education/Professor/Student — This toolbox is well suited for learning and teaching genome and proteome analysis techniques. Educators and students can concentrate on bioinformatic algorithms instead of programming basic functions such as reading and writing to files.

While the toolbox includes many bioinformatic functions, it is not intended to be a complete set of tools for scientists to analyze their biological data. However, the MATLAB environment is ideal for rapidly designing and prototyping the tools you need.