An organizational environment for in silico experiments in molecular biology

Molecular biologists, just like geneticists, make use of various experimental mechanisms and devices to conduct research and to validate or invalidate their theories or initial hypotheses. Mechanisms powered by information technology, called in silico, put data and analysis tools at the centre of the experiments, and are thus different from in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro mechanisms. Multiple resources (data sources as well as analysis tools) are widely available and, very often, allow various modes of operation, requiring certain expertise for their optimal use. This is especially true when drawing up complex analysis scenarios based on the sequential use of appropriate processing tools. To facilitate the construction of these experimentation mechanisms, we propose a scientific workflow infrastructure which uses an organizational environment to allow abstract planning of the experimentation, followed by its concretization. The concretization phase includes a verification of the conformity of the planned process chains composition to avoid any error during execution.