Melvin

Welcome to the start of your Melvin journey!

If you're new to voice-based skills, begin from here!

Continue reading to learn about the Melvin Skill, Interactions and more!

Melvin is a conversational interface to cancer genomics data. These data are often hidden within databases or web-based graphical user interfaces – making them difficult to access for most users. Melvin provides an easy way to query and perform analytics over these datasets via voice. Want to explore which genes are most mutated in breast cancer? Interested to see which cancer types have the most TP53 deletions? Maybe you want to determine if GATA3 expression in breast cancer is higher in GATA3 mutant samples? Melvin allows you to facilitate all of these analyses and more through conversational, compound queries.

Just start by saying “Tell me about...” followed by the name of a gene, data type (e.g. mutations, indels, CNAs, expression, etc.), or a cancer type. Melvin will remember your conversation and provide biologically relevant information after each interaction. For example, saying “Tell me about breast cancer” followed by “Tell me about mutations” would provide a summary of the most mutated genes in breast cancer.

Melvin is multi-modal and will provide both audio and graphical responses. For the best Melvin experience, we recommend using a device with a screen (mobile phone, Echo Show, Fire TV Stick, etc.). Once you explore Melvin, you will find that it has many powerful functionalities such as saving and restoring analyses, performing statistical comparisons, and providing detailed gene information.

Data

• Mutational and copy number data are from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as provided by the Genomic Data Commons (GDC)
  • https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/ccg/research/structural-genomics/tcga
  • https://gdc.cancer.gov/
• TCGA gene expression data are from the Xenia web portal (TOIL dataset)
  • https://xena.ucsc.edu/
• Only genes present in the Cancer Gene Census (CGC) are supported currently
  • https://www.sanger.ac.uk/data/cancer-gene-census/
• Gene definitions are provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene

caution

Melvin is meant to provide information only. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please seek the advice of a physician or qualified health professional regarding any medical condition, and never disregard said advice based on information provided by Melvin.