• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 2, 2016

University of California, San Diego bioengineers have created what they believe to be the first online search engine for functional genomics data. Dubbed GeNemo, the engine allows researchers to search for genomic data from online data repositories.

Since functional genomics data records the diverse activities of every piece of an organism's genome and is directly relevant to health and disease, engineers hope the search engine will help researchers uncover the functional aspects in specific parts of genomes that are associated with normal physiology or disease of specific organs and tissues.

Rather than searching by text, the engine allows researchers to search inside functional data, which many seem similar to deep linking in apps and across the Web. For example, someone might search for binding patterns similar to a novel transcription.

The work from the Sheng Zhong bioengineering lab at UC San Diego was published online by the journal Nucleic Acids Research.