A Web Platform to Integrate Bioinformatics Tools. A Case of Study

AGOSTINI, FEDERICO; HERNÁNDEZ, PILAR; DORADO, GABRIEL; GÁLVEZ, SERGIO

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH

Año: 2021 vol. 1367 p. 506 - 515

2194-5357

Bioinformatics has evolved considerably over the past few decades, due to the huge amount of data generated in the omics fields, such as genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. Biologists face new software applications and tools, published at an increasing rate. Yet, it may be cumbersome to deal with their installation, execution and integration. To address this problem, many web applications have emerged focused in particular domains, including gene ontology and phylogenetics, integrating the widespread used bioinformatics tools. Following this approach, we present a service oriented web platform to analyze gene families in plants. This is particularly important in food security, as specific genes may be involved in the plant’s tolerance responses to stresses and diseases. The platform integrates in a single site several bioinformatics tools and public databases, providing a clear workflow to resolve common problems in the analyses of genes. This allows, for instance, generating customizable phylogenetic trees, Circos diagrams, interactive charts and 3D prediction of proteins. Its backend architecture makes easy to integrate new tools and functionalities, by means of SOAP web services. Security is also a key point in the platform, because some tools may require whole access to computing resources: multithreading in R, deep learning in GPGPU, etc.