MACBenAbim: A Multi-platform Mobile Application for searching keyterms in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

Bioinformation. 2012;8(16):790-1. doi: 10.6026/97320630008790. Epub 2012 Aug 24.

Abstract

Computational biology and bioinformatics are gradually gaining grounds in Africa and other developing nations of the world. However, in these countries, some of the challenges of computational biology and bioinformatics education are inadequate infrastructures, and lack of readily-available complementary and motivational tools to support learning as well as research. This has lowered the morale of many promising undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers from aspiring to undertake future study in these fields. In this paper, we developed and described MACBenAbim (Multi-platform Mobile Application for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics), a flexible user-friendly tool to search for, define and describe the meanings of keyterms in computational biology and bioinformatics, thus expanding the frontiers of knowledge of the users. This tool also has the capability of achieving visualization of results on a mobile multi-platform context.

Availability: MACBenAbim is available from the authors for non-commercial purposes.

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Computational biology; Keyterms; Mobile application; Multi-platform application.