G-BLAST: A Grid Service for BLAST

This paper described the design and implementation of G-BLAST – a Grid Service for one of the most widely used bioinformatics application Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST). G-BLAST uses the factory design pattern to provide application developers a common interface to incorporate multiple implementations of BLAST. The process of application selection, resource selection, scheduling, and monitoring is completely hidden from the end-user through the web-based user interfaces and the programmatic interfaces enable users to employ G-BLAST as part of a bioinformatics pipeline. G-BLAST uses an adaptive scheduler to select the best application and the best set of resources available that will provide the shortest turnaround time when executed in a grid environment. G-BLAST is successfully deployed on a campus and regional grid and several BLAST applications are tested for different combinations of input parameters and computational resources. Experimental results illustrate the overall performance improvements obtained with G-BLAST.