A Grid-based system for integrating bioinformatics applications

To access up-to-date biological data sources across multiple heterogeneous databases and analysis tools distributed all over the networks, and to combine them into workflows, we propose a grid-based system for integrating bioinformatics applications, which we named “Bioinformatics: Ask Any Questions (BAAQ)”. BAAQ allows scientists to store and manage biological data and bioinformatics tools as remote services, and to build analysis workflows that integrate these services seamlessly. Via a grid based computation and graphically-enabled editor environment, we address how to compose a robust workflow to perform a complex bioinformatics analysis and to visualize results using Active Service Provider and Wrapped Program Toolkits. We propose a metadata model to organize biological resources and to share and discover knowledge in grid community. Finally, we present a case study applying BAAQ to a bioinformatics problem.