BAAQ; An Infrastructure for application integration and knowledge discovery in bioinformatics

Gong, X.*; Nakamura, Kensuke; Yura, Kei; Go, Nobuhiro

The emerging grid computing technologies enable bioinformatics scientists to conduct their researches in a virtual laboratory. However, the development of grid applications is still a nightmare for general bioinformatics scientists, due to the lack of grid programming environments. Here, we present a system, which we named Bioinformatics: Ask Any Questions (BAAQ), to automate this development procedure as much as possible. BAAQ allows scientists to store and manage remote biological data and programs, to build analysis workflows that integrate these resources seamlessly, and to discover knowledge from available resources. This paper addresses two issues in building grid applications in bioinformatics: how to smoothly compose an analysis workflow using heterogeneous resources and how to efficiently discover and re-use available resources in the grid community. Correspondingly an intelligent grid programming environment and an active solution recommendation service are proposed.