Integration of Genome Databases Using a Deductive Object-Oriented Database

Susumu Goto[1] (goto@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp)
Norihiro Sakamoto[2] (nori@csce.kyushu-u.ac.jp)
Toshihisa Takagi[1] (takagi@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

[1]Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108 Japan
[2]Department of Computer Science and Communication Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University
6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812 Japan


Abstract

Recently, many genome databanks were developed as a result of growing genome project activities. Each of them consists of a large amount and variety of data, and they were developed independently. Therefore, their integration and efficient management of the data are required. It is also necessary to develop a framework for easily building and testing biological hypotheses with the integrated database. We developed a deductive object-oriented database for searching an integrated database, acquiring new knowledge from it, and storing the knowledge in the database. It consists of an object-oriented database that integrates the conventional genome databases such as GenBank, and deductive language interface for genome analysis. In this paper, we present an overview of the system and examples of analyses using the database.