ISYS (Integrated SYStem): a platform for integrating heterogeneous bioinformatic resources 1

Modern biological discovery is becoming a domain where one increasingly requires a synthesis of disparate biological data to make significant progress. For example, over the life of an investigation it is not uncommon to need to employ QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci) mapping techniques, access sequenced information of the candidate regions, cross species boundaries with sequence homologies via BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool), seek to relate interesting annotations via gene ontologies, and follow this up with directed gene expression studies. In fact, the multifaceted approach to biological discovery can be seen by noting that the opposite sequence of events is equally feasible. To be able to deploy this type of investigation, one requires the computational analysis of data at numerous stages. Indeed, while bioinformatic analysis is clearly not solely sufficient for biological discovery (except in rare cases), it is becoming increasingly necessary as a component in almost all cases. In response to this, much bioinformatic development to date has been in been in either the development of individual, specialized tools and algorithms, or integration at the data level. This is witnessed by the wide variety of expert tools available and the plethora of different standards and databases for cross-data type comparisons. Yet despite this, moving between even a small number of programs during a single session at the computer can be clumsy and inefficient, and integration at the data level has numerous inherent limitations, including constraints on flexibility, biological context, cost, and timeliness. Integration – or the lack of it – remains one of the fundamental obstacles to the efficient identification, inclusion, analysis, and synthesis of biological data.