Integrating ontology and workflow in PROTEUS, a grid-based problem solving environment for bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is as a bridge between life science and computer science: computer algorithms are needed to face complexity of biological processes. Bioinformatics applications manage complex biological data stored into distributed and often heterogeneous databases and require large computing power. We discuss requirements of such applications and present the architecture of PROTEUS, a grid-based problem solving environment that integrates ontology and workflow approaches to enhance composition and execution of bioinformatics applications on the grid.