July 15 marks the fourth anniversary of ScanGEO, a DartCF supported web application that enables users to identify differentially expressed genes in 20 commonly studied plants, animals and bacteria.
The name “ScanGEO” describes the way in which the application works. Users choose a species, enter a search term and select an optional set of genes, and the application scans all studies available in NCBI’s GEO database to identify conditions under which target genes were differentially expressed.
The system was accessed over 1 million times in the last four years with monthly unique IP users peaking at 100,000 users in March 2020. Katja Koeppen, Ph.D., who manages ScanGEO, believes worldwide usage surged when stay-at-home orders incentivized researchers to re-use existing data.
The figure below shows the locations of ScanGEO users.
