[BioC] what is the difference between AssayTechnologies and AssayDomains

[Steve Lianoglou]

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 11:01 PM, Wang Peter <wng.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> dear ALL:
> I am writing a book  to introduce bioconductor.

Interesting. Is this going to be published through a publisher for
sale, or something you plan on putting up on a wiki? Or a pdf you will
distribute yourself, or?

What's your timeline?

> but i am confused what is the difference between AssayTechnologies and
> AssayDomains
> in the  BioViews?
> who can tell me some material for reading

I don't have the real answers, so this is all pure speculation:

I'd guess that AssayDomains was meant to categorize "the types of
things" one might want to measure, and AssayTechnologies would be for
the concrete things used to measure them.

So, gene expression, genetic variability, DNA methylation (in my mind)
fit into AssayDomains because they are different types of things one
would want to measure. In this schema, I think maybe aCGH and
ExonArray would be categories that fit better into AssayTechnologies,
and the analogous terms for these in AssayDomains would be
CopyNumberVariants and AlternativeSplicing, respectively.

To the extent that these categories are meant as tools to help users
discover packages related to their work, I think the *exact* meaning
of each isn't all that important, but perhaps a bit more clarity on
what their original intent was can be useful. Maybe a brief
description of these could go somewhere in the developer guideline
pages so that package authors could better qualify their own work (I
guess the tagging is ultimately up to them).

-steve

-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Defender of The Thesis
 | Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
 | Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact