SisGen: A CORBA-based data management program for DNA sequencing projects

Abstract

Biological data deluge has challenged researchers over the last decade. Expressed sequence tag (EST) analyzes provide a rapid and economical means to identify candidate genes, gene expression profiles in different cell conditions, as well as functional annotation of putative gene products. Although EST analysis tools are publicly available there is still a lack of comprehensive data analysis and management programs. This work presents SisGen, an integrated software system capable of efficiently managing multi-user genomic projects. SisGen is a Java client-server application that uses CORBA as a middleware in a multi-layer architecture. The software integrates data management an annotation pipeline in a rich graphical visualization environment. The architectural design is presented and highlights the advantages in terms of portability, interconnectivity, modularity and user interface that can be achieved with this concept. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.