RDAVIDWebService: a versatile R interface to DAVID

FRESNO, CRISTOBAL; PRATO, LAURA; FERNÁNDEZ, ELMER ANDRÉS

Rosario

Congreso; 4to Congreso Argentino de Bioinformática y Biología Computacional; 2013

A2B2C

One of the most accessed systems for functional genomics/proteomics analysis is the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID), a web-based online bioinformatics resource that aims to provide tools for functional interpretation of large lists of genes/proteins [1]. Its access is carried mainly through a website. There is also a uniform resource locator (URL)-based application programming interface (API), to query DAVID programmatically, accessible through DAVIDQuery R package [2]. However, the URL-API has limited capabilities, such as URL length and only works with the default settings. In the year 2012, a web service interface was made available allowing full access and control over all its functionalities except visualization [3]. Although, it is possible to handle DAVID web services (DWS) through R, it requires high programming skills. In addition, query results are very difficult to manage since they are XML (SOAP [4]) or Java objects (rJava [5]). Here we provide a versatile class-based R interface to access DAVID [6], which uses and enhance DWS.