The Gorilla Softwar Group is interested in computer/human interfaces and specifically designing access tools for genetic databases. The roots ofThe Genome Machine concept was first proposed to NIH in 1989 in an SBIR grant submitted by David Adler and Michael Willis. Adler and Willis also developed and marketed the first edition of the Idiogram Album: Human, Macpaint format and later in PostScript. Adler later released the second edition of Idiogram Album: Human and Idiogram Album: Mouse.

The idiograms are not only graphical illustrations but are a stylized view of our lowest resolution image of entire genomes. These images can be interface elements themselves in querying information as well as displaying the results of map queries. Other graphical maps are of course possible and necessary. Interfaces such as the Encyclopedia of the Mouse (Jackson Labs, Bar Harbor) and GnomeView (Batelle NW) are good examples of graphical interfaces to genetic databases. But the concept of remote database/local interface is not implemented in either of these - both examples would be much more powerful tools if they utilized network database access. GDD accessor is very easy to use and does not sacrifice complex queries but is not a true graphical interface and is only available for the Apple Macintosh.