August 1, 2016.
A major obstacle in genetic research is developing streamlined methods for analyzing large amounts of data. The statistical computer programming language R provides users with the ability to develop packages containing specific functions in order to create more accessible data analysis pipelines. However, writing code in R can still be intimidating to those with little to no coding experience. Fortunately, the R package shiny provides a framework for developing web applications based on R functions. Using shiny, we developed a user-friendly web application containing functions of the R package strataG. The strataG package contains several functions for summarizing genetic data and analyzing population structure. Researchers who do not know how to use R or may not feel comfortable with using strataG on the R command line can now use a browser-based graphical user interface to load their raw data, select and run analyses, and save the outputs generated. User-friendly data analysis tools such as ours will assist researchers as the field of biology continues to increasingly demand that scientists have advanced computing skills. The user interface of this web application is presented here for “Data Development and Analysis Pathways for Marine Mammals and Turtles.” The server will be presented by Warren Asfazadour, et al. separately in the same series.
Bioinformatics | Computational Biology
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Southwest Fisheries Science Center (NOAA SWFSC)
This project has been made possible with support from Chevron (www.chevron.com) and the California State University STEM Teacher Researcher Program.