Intuitive bioinformatics for genomics applications: Omega-brigid workflow framework

Abstract

The recent developments in life sciences and technology have produced large amounts of data in an extremely fast and cost-efficient way which require the development of new algorithms, coupled with massively parallel computing. Besides, biologists are usually non-programmers, thus demanding intuitive computer applications that are easy to use by means of a friendly GUI. In addition, different algorithms, databases and other tools usually lie on incompatible file formats, applications, operating systems and hardware platforms. It is therefore of paramount importance to overcome such limitations, so that bioinformatics becomes much more widely used amongst biologists. The main goal of our research project is to unify many of these existing bioinformatics applications and resources (local and remote) in one easy-to-use environment, independent of the computing platform, being a concentrator resource tool with a friendly interface. To achieve this, we propose a tool based on a new, open, free and well-documented architecture called Biomniverso. Two main elements make up such a tool: its kernel (Omega), which supplies services specifically adapted to allow the addition of new bioinformatics functionalities by means of plugins (like Minerva, which makes easy to detect SNP amongst a set of genomic data to discover fraudulent olive oil), and the interface (Brigid), which allows even non-programmer laboratory scientists to chain different processes into workflows and customize them without code writing. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.