Web & Grid Technologies in Bioinformatics, Computational And
Current Bioinformatics, 2008, 3, 000-000 1 Web & Grid Technologies in Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology: A Review Azhar A. Shah1, Daniel Barthel1, Piotr Lukasiak2,3, Jacek Blazewicz2,3 and Natalio Krasnogor*,1 1School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, NG81BB, Nottingham, UK 2Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology, Piotrowo 2, 60-965 Poznan, Poland 3Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Noskowskiego 12/14, 61- 704 Poznan, Poland Abstract: The acquisition of biological data, ranging from molecular characterization and simulations (e.g. protein fold- ing dynamics), to systems biology endeavors (e.g. whole organ simulations) all the way up to ecological observations (e.g. as to ascertain climate change’s impact on the biota) is growing at unprecedented speed. The use of computational and networking resources is thus unavoidable. As the datasets become bigger and the acquisition technology more refined, the biologist is empowered to ask deeper and more complex questions. These, in turn, drive a runoff effect where large re- search consortia emerge that span beyond organizations and national boundaries. Thus the need for reliable, robust, certi- fied, curated, accessible, secure and timely data processing and management becomes entrenched within, and crucial to, 21st century biology. Furthermore, the proliferation of biotechnologies and advances in biological sciences has produced a strong drive for new informatics solutions, both at the basic science and technological levels. The previously unknown situation of dealing with, on one hand, (potentially) exabytes of data, much of which is noisy, has large experimental er- rors or theoretical uncertainties associated with it, or on the other hand, large quantities of data that require automated computationally intense analysis and processing, have produced important innovations in web and grid technology.
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