the proliferation of bioinformatics tools for genetic analysis aids researchers in identifying and categorizing genes and gene sets of interest in their work; however, the large variety of tools that perform substantially similar aggregative and analytical functions can also confuse and frustrate new users. the decentralization encouraged by aggregative tools allows individual research groups to maintain specialized servers dedicated to specific types of data analysis in the expectation that their output will be collected into a larger report on a gene or protein of interest to other researchers.