Authors:
P. Larmande
;
C. Tranchant-Dubreuil
;
L. Regnier
;
I. Mougenot
and
T. Libourel
Affiliation:
CIRAD, IRD, CINES, LIRMM, CNRS, France
Keyword(s):
Plant genomics, interoperability, integration, mediator.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Coupling and Integrating Heterogeneous Data Sources
;
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Enterprise Information Systems
Abstract:
The study of the function of genes, or functional genomics, is today one of the most active disciplines in the life sciences and requires effective integration and processing of related information. Today’s biologist has access to bioinformatics resources to help him in his experimental research. In genomics, several tens of public data sources can be of interest to him, each source contributing a part of the useful information. The difficulty lies in the integration of this information, often semantically inconsistent or expressing differing viewpoints, and, very often, only available in heterogenous formats. In this context, informatics has a role to play in the design of systems that are flexible and adaptable to significant changes in biological data and formats. It is within this framework that this paper presents the design and implementation of an integrated environment strongly supported by knowledge-representation and problem-solving tools.