BioNumerics was first released in 1998. PulseNet, a network run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), uses BioNumerics to compare pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns and whole genome sequences from different bacterial strains.[1][2] CaliciNet, an outbreak surveillance network for noroviruses, is another example of a network which uses BioNumerics to submit norovirus sequences and basic epidemiologic information to a central database.[3]
Features
The basis of BioNumerics is a database consisting of entries. The entries correspond to the individual organisms or samples under study and are characterized by a unique key and by a number of user-defined information fields. Each entry in a database may be characterized by one or more experiments that can be linked easily to the entry.[4] In BioNumerics, experiments are divided in seven classes: fingerprints, spectra, characters, sequences, sequence read sets, trend data and matrices.
^Vauterin L, Vauterin P. Integrated databasing and analysis. In: Molecular Identification, Systematics, and Population Structure of Prokaryotes (ed. Erko Stackebrandt). Springer, 2006. ISBN978-3-540-23155-4
