Bioinformatics
Research and Development
Many
funding agencies and private enterprises are emphasizing the
need for the integration of multiple disciplines. The main idea
supporting this approach is that multidisciplinary and inter-institutional
research combining the expertise of scientists studying the
biology of different organisms using gene expression profiling,
proteomics, DNA sequencing, nuclear magnetic resonance, crystallographic
tools and other post-genomic techniques can lead to the development
novel and advanced mathematical and computational methods capable
to predict and model of biochemical networks and in general,
facilitate the understanding of complex biological systems.
With currently more than 350 biological information databases
via the Internet, there is a limited number of tools capable
to bridge, mine and represent different post-genomic data sources
efficiently. Most bioinformatics tools currently support users
interested in specific problems and remain limited since still
perform analysis using web browsers. Working with web browsers
is extremely limited for three main reasons:
1) The query are restricted to the scope of the browser
2)
Querying this information manually is time consuming and tedious
3)
These applications limit the efficiency of the user when questions
of biological significance need to query data sets held at different
locations.
Since
software interoperability can can generate new insights on fundamental
questions of biology, it is of interest develop advanced tools
capable to integrate, analyse and visualize this data effiencly.