GENCORE: AN AUTOMATIC GENETIC DATABASE CROSS CORRELATOR

THE PROPOSED EFFORT INITIATES RESEARCH TO DEVELOP AN INTELLIGENT INTERFACE AND CROSS-REFERENCING TOOL ADDRESSING THE UNIQUE NEEDS OF NUCLEOTIDE/PEPTIDE SEQUENCE DATABASE DEVELOPERS. THE PROPOSED COMPUTER SYSTEM, NAMED GENCORE (AN AUTOMATIC GENETIC DATABASE CROSS-CORRELATOR) AUTOMATES THE PROCESS OF GENERATING, IMPLEMENTING, AND STORING THE RESULTS OF CROSS-REFERENCE SEARCHES ACROSS MULTIPLE SEQUENCEDATABASES (WITH INCOMPATIBLE FORMATS), THEREBY PROVIDING FUTURE DATABASE USERS WITH READY ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT SEQUENCE AND ANNOTATION HOMOLOGIES. GENCORE PROVIDES SEVERAL INNOVATIVE FEATURES THAT WILL ENHANCE THE PRODUCTIVITY OF RESEARCHERS INVOLVED IN THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT. THESE INCLUDE (1) AN EXPERT SYSTEM WITH AN EXPLANATION FACILITY THAT USES EMBEDDED MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND DATABASE-SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE TO GENERATE SEARCH CRITERIA BASED ON USER-SELECTED SOURCE RECORDS AND IMPLEMENT A CROSS-REFERENCE SEARCH ACROSS MULTIPLE DATABASES IN A SINGLEPASS; (2) A SPECIALIZED, PORTABLE, HUMAN-FACTORED, USER-INTUITIVE INTERFACE DESIGN THAT AIDS BOTH IN THE SPECIFICATION/MODIFICATION OF SEARCH CRITERIA AND THE DEFINITION OF FIELDS TO STORE CROSS-REFERENCE RESULTS; AND (3) THE FACILITY TO DOWNLOAD SEARCH RESULTS INTO A LOCAL DATABASE FOR FUTURE ACCESS OR CONVENIENT DISPLAY.