PI:  Eve Wurtele
Co-PIs:  Dan Berleant, Dianne Cook, Julie Dickerson, Les Miller, Heike Hofmann

Summary: MetNet is a suite of computational tools that brings together biologists from around the world to visualize, analyze, and exchange information about Arabidopsis, the tiny plant that has emerged as a model for understanding the genetic and metabolic behavior of plants. MetNet provides the computational tools researchers need to formulate testable hypotheses about the ways in which specific genes function.

As a suite of tools, MetNet has many components, including a database of the regulatory and metabolic network of Arabidopsis compiled from biologists worldwide. Information from the database can be transferred to FCModeler, which finds cycles and pathways in the network and visualizes and models it in combination with expression data; GeneGobi, a unique multivariate display and analysis tool that can do statistical analyses; and PathBinderA, graph modeling using the open source statistical analysis language, R, and versatile text mining. These tools will place experimental data in the context of metabolic and developmental networks to propose new insights about Arabidopsis gene function.

Outreach includes Meta!Blast, an interactive virtual reality computer game for high school students that lets them enter and explore the metabolism of a plant cell. Because Meta!Blast can be viewed and navigated in a virtual reality environment, or on a desktop computer, it can also be used in a classroom. These activities will promote research, education, and dissemination of results to a broad audience, while developing a new generation of scientists.

05-10-2006
100 million pixels of virtual reality

05-08-2006
The most realistic virtual reality room in the world