How to Use the Novus Explorer

How to Use the Novus Explorer

The Novus Explorer is designed to help you with your scientific explorations. It allows you to browse genes, pathways and diseases related to your gene, pathway or disease of interest.  This bioinformatic tool helps you gain an understanding of biological neighborhoods in your research space.  The Novus Explorer also helps you find products useful for research related to your gene, pathway or disease of interest.

How to Get Started

  1. Go to the Novus Explorer: www.novusbio.com/explorer

  2. Start by clicking into one of the 3 boxes shown:

  3. Type in the Gene, Pathway or Disease that you would like to search.  For example, if you want to explore the apoptosis pathway, type 'apoptosis' into the Pathway box.

  4. Click ENTER to begin your search.

  5. The Novus Explorer will search for that term and display the matches as follows:

  6. Browse the list of matches and select the most appropriate one by clicking on it.

  7. Once you click on the term that you wish to explore, it will appear in the middle of the Novus Explorer:

  8. You can now explore relationships between your term of interest and related Genes, Pathways, PTMs (post-translational modifications) or Diseases.  Click on the relationship that you would like to display and the Novus Explorer will show the top 10 relationships.  For example, if you click on Genes, the Novus Explorer will display the top 10 Genes related to Apoptisis:

  9. From this web view, you can continue exploring relationships wtih Genes, Pathways, PTMs and Diseases.

  10. By clicking on the + button you can view other related Genes, Pathways, PTMs and Diseases based on that term of interest, as well as view the number of Products Available (if you are exploring a Gene).  For example, there are 62 Products Available to the TNF gene:

  11. By clicking on the Products Available box, you will be directed to a detailed webpage of all of these products, where you can filter by product type, species reactivity, useful applications, and many more.

  12. To explore another Gene, Pathway or Disease, return to the main Novus Explorer page (www.novusbio.com/explorer)  and enter another search term.

  13. You can always reset your search, using the 'Clear All' button in the bottom right hand corner of the Novus Explorer:

The Brains Behind the Novus Explorer

The Novus Explorer displays relationships between Genes, Pathways, PTMs and Diseases based on the co-citation of terms in scientific publications.  The bioinformatic data used to power this tool is supplied by Biovista Inc. Biovista's Biolab Experiment Assistant (BEA), a literature mining platform, allows users to search relationships between concepts of interest such as genes, diseases, compounds and cell types to obtain an overview of the knowledge that is captured in scientific literature (Medline) and patent databases (USPTO).

The Novus Explorer 'web' connects these data relationships between Genes, Pathways, PTMs and Diseases using a line.  Each connector line displays a small publication icon on it:

By clicking on this publication icon, a window will open that displays the Literature related to these two terms.  For example, when clicking on the publication icon that connects the TNF Gene to the Apoptosis Pathway, the following is displayed:

These publications are clickable.  By clicking on a title, the Novus Explorer will take you to PubMed and display the abstract of that article:

Novus Explorer Troubleshooting Guide

• The Novus Explorer is a Flash-based application. If you cannot see the Novus Explorer application when you visit the webpage (www.novusbio.com/explorer), try downloading the free Adobe® Flash® Player here.
• If you notice that the Novus Explorer is not responding, try one of these steps:
  • Reload your web browser.
  • Type in the Novus Explorer URL into a new web browser window (www.novusbio.com/explorer).
  • Clear your web browser's cache.
  • If none of these three steps work, please email the Novus Web Support Team at [email protected].