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BioCloud Search EnGene: Surfing Biological Data on the Cloud

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Book cover Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics (CIBB 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNBI,volume 8452))

Abstract

The massive production and spread of biomedical data around the web introduces new challenges related to identify computational approaches for providing quality search and browsing of web resources. This papers presents BioCloud Search EnGene (BSE), a cloud application that facilitates searching and integration of the many layers of biological information offered by public large-scale genomic repositories. Grounding on the concept of dataspace, BSE is built on top of a cloud platform that severely curtails issues associated with scalability and performance. Like popular online gene portals, BSE adopts a gene-centric approach: researchers can find their information of interest by means of a simple “Google-like” query interface that accepts standard gene identification as keywords. We present BSE architecture and functionality and discuss how our strategies contribute to successfully tackle big data problems in querying gene-based web resources. BSE is publically available at: http://biocloud-unica.appspot.com/.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Francesco Masulli for his appreciations and precious suggestions and the CIBB 2013 general chairs Enrico Formenti, Roberto Tagliaferri and Ernst Wit for hosting the presentation of BSE as special event at CIBB 2013.

This research was supported by RAS, Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (Legge regionale 7 agosto 2007, n. 7), in the project “DENIS: Dataspaces Enhancing the Next Internet in Sardinia”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Via Ospedale 72, 09124, Cagliari, Italy

    Nicoletta Dessì, Emanuele Pascariello, Gabriele Milia & Barbara Pes

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  1. Nicoletta Dessì
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  2. Emanuele Pascariello
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  3. Gabriele Milia
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  4. Barbara Pes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicoletta Dessì .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University Nice Sophia Antipolis, Sophia Antipolis, France

    Enrico Formenti

  2. University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy

    Roberto Tagliaferri

  3. University of Groningen, AG Groningen, The Netherlands

    Ernst Wit

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Dessì, N., Pascariello, E., Milia, G., Pes, B. (2014). BioCloud Search EnGene: Surfing Biological Data on the Cloud. In: Formenti, E., Tagliaferri, R., Wit, E. (eds) Computational Intelligence Methods for Bioinformatics and Biostatistics. CIBB 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8452. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09042-9_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09042-9_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09041-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09042-9

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