Integrated multidimensional database

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Overview A multi-user, computer-implemented database (DA) allows laboratory (lab) researchers to plan, implement, manage, track, review, and interpret research within the lab as the research occurs.
The DA permits the electronic publication of selected data and all supporting information, images, and annotations in database format in a searchable publication database.
The data in the publication database may be accessed and used by subscribers to the database or by the general public.
The DA allows automatic integration of complex molecular research data on both a single patient level and a multiple patient level, and provides templates within which molecular data from multiple sources and of various types may be summarized in a fashion that takes advantage of human and computerized pattern recognition abilities.
When used in molecular research studies, the DA highlights relationships between genotypes and phenotypes.
The DA database application additionally allows users from different institutions and laboratories to compare molecular data from various studies in a highly organized way, to verify the results of existing studies based on the underlying fundamental research data, and to use fundamental research data from existing studies in new studies and to answer different questions than were answered in the studies for which the research data were collected.
The organization of the database is such that the organism under study (human, animal, or other) is central, and each step of the research process is related back to the organism as research occurs.
Each step of the process is logically dependent and fully communicative with previous steps.
So, for example, to be used in a gene sequencing reaction, a specific tissue reagent (such as a purified DNA sample) is given a unique identifier in the database that is programmatically related to its antecedents (e.
g.
, the tissue block from which it originated, the organ from which it originated, and the patient from which it originated), so that it can be related to all previous and subsequent research involving that tissue reagent