Abstract
A large number of diverse, complex, and distributed data resources are currently available in the Bioinformatics domain. The pace of discovery and the diversity of information means that centralised reference databases like UniProt and Ensembl cannot integrate all potentially relevant information sources. From a user perspective however, centralised access to all relevant information concerning a specific query is essential. The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) defines a communication protocol to exchange annotations on genomic and protein sequences; this standardisation enables clients to retrieve data from a myriad of sources, thus offering centralised access to end-users.We introduce MyDas, a web server that facilitates the publishing of biological annotations according to the DAS specification. It deals with the common functionality requirements of making data available, while also providing an extension mechanism in order to implement the specifics of data store interaction. MyDas allows the user to define where the required information is located along with its structure, and is then responsible for the communication protocol details.
Highlights
The integration of information is essential in any research project as a variety of data is generated in experiments, and must be analysed and validated in the context of the latest available knowledge-base
Showroom MyDas is an extensible Distributed Annotation System (DAS) server that has been designed with ease of development in mind
UniProt (Universal Protein Resource) [6] is a comprehensive catalogue of protein sequences and functional information. It consists of different databases, each optimized for different uses
Summary
The integration of information is essential in any research project as a variety of data is generated in experiments, and must be analysed and validated in the context of the latest available knowledge-base. The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a widely used integration system in the bioinformatics field, and provides a method for taking data from more than one web-based resource, and displaying it in a single view. DAS allows data to be integrated from multiple, heterogeneous databases in a standardised and portable format [2]. In this way, laboratories and research groups adopting the protocol can share, visualise and compare their data. The DAS architecture is service-oriented and is comprised of three components: the Registry, Sources and Clients. The DAS Registry (http://www.dasregistry.org) acts as a directory providing information about registered sources. DAS Sources provide an interface to access and retrieve biological data, and DAS Clients, such as Dasty3 [3], Dalliance [4] and myKaryoView [5], provide a unified view of biological information, collecting data from multiple sources
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