Development of a grid infrastructure for functional genomics

Abstract

The BRIDGES project is incrementally developing and exploring database integration over six geographically distributed research sites with the framework of a Wellcome Trust biomedical research project (the Cardiovascular Functional Genomics project) to provide a sophisticated infrastructure for bioinformaticians. Grid technologies are being used to facilitate this integration. Key issues to be investigated in BRIDGES are data integration and data federation, security, user friend-liness, access to large scale computational facilities and incorporation of existing bioinformatics software solutions, both for visualisation as well as analysis of genomic data sets. This paper outlines the initial experiences in applying Grid technologies and outlines the on-going designs put forward to address these issues. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.