The BioAgent Project
Where BioAgent comes from:
DNA microarray is a highly-parallel methodology to screen genome samples for the expression of particular DNA sequences. To gather information about gene expression is a much more difficult task than DNA sequence, because gene expression is a dynamic process dependent on many factors. The knowledge of the ORFs (Open Reading Framework) for a certain organism opens the possibility to globally study the expression of these genes under chosen circumstances. By using DNA-microarray methodology, the investigator gets a global picture of the genes expression under study. Since experimental data are disseminated in a myriad of different databases that are duplicated in several repositories, the experimental data integration and clustering imply the exploration of a sites network from which the investigator can integrate (select and cluster) data of interest. Preliminary results have been obtained by adopting an intelligent agent architecture BioAgent as communication and coordination tool among distributed sites, in the case of the expression of yeast genome. Bioagent is a project born from the collaboration of the information systems and intelligent systems group of the university of Camerino with Luca Toldo. The project aims to specialized Hermes, agent-based middleware for mobile computing, for the Bioinformatics. In particular, to support the specification and implementation of activity-based distributed applications for biological data and knowledge analyses, and the modelling and simulation of biological systems.
On-Line Resources:
A BioAgent Tour
A small tour on the BioAgent's architecture and features.
Publications
Papers related to the project.
Technical Reports
Technical reports and unpublished related to the project..
Software
Distribution package containig some of the tools developed in the project.
Demo
An on-line demo to test some of the tools developed in
the project.
Forum
General discussion about BioAgent: instructions, problems, bugs and new ideas.
Related Project
Some of the projects aim to use BioAgent.
Working Space
Documentation for Members