Context The Rhône-Alpes Genopole has a Transcriptome platform. One of its main objectives consists in offering means for regional laboratories to generate DNA chips of low or medium density and dedicated to specific projects. Realization and analysis of these chips require a sequence of steps: probes design and synthesis, spotting, target preparation, hybridization, fluorescence capture, normalization, result analysis… The management of informations about these steps can not be done with a traditional « lab notebook » any more. A computerized database and associated services are necessary to help research experiments and to ensure knowledge sharing and communication. Objectives We aim at designing, prototyping and realizing an information system for : •the management of clones and/or oligonucleotide bank collections, •aided chip design, •experiment management, •storage, comparison and broadcasting of results. Study process Short term A collaboration with the « Institut de Pharmacologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire » of Nice (Pascal Barbry, CNRS UMR 6097) allows us to adapt the schema of their Medlab database to the specific needs of the Genopole laboratories (among all the BF2I laboratory and their « Buchnera chip » project). As a second step, we will define a web-based user interface for the capture and the retrieval of data. For these two steps, we are currently studying future end-users needs. This work will lead to a prototype at the end of June, 2002. Long term We wish to set up a wider collaboration with the different Genopole actors, so that we can study: •the extension of the database schema to a more generic one, •the integration of many existing databases to a datawarehouse, including detailed and history data, as well as services to explore data and make comparative analyses, •the exportation of data to a format dedicated to exchange and communication (MIAME).