Oncoyeasti: a web-based application to translate data obtained from Saccharomyces cerevisiae high-throughput drug screens into cancer therapeutics

The budding yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ) gene deletion library consists of a collection of more than 6,000 gene-deletion mutants and is useful for high-throughput screening of anti-cancer drugs. Because of the shorter doubling time and the significant homology the budding yeast   shares with human cells, using a high-throughput chemical screen of budding yeast gene deletion library, one can rapidly identify various genetic targets of anti-cancer drugs. But analyzing the data derived from a yeast library screen to identify corresponding human homologs and their status in various cancers is a cumbersome process. We have developed a web-based app, Oncoyeasti , which enables the researcher to automatically identify the corresponding human homologs of S. cerevisiae and the status of these homologs genes in tumor samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas Database and cell line samples from the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia. This would enable the scientists to identify the tumors and choose cell lines to work on and thus serve as an indispensable tool to translate their research into human cancers.