HIGH PERFORMANCE SEARCHING AND PATTERN RECOGNITION FOR HUMAN GENOME DATABASES

THE HUMANE GENOME PROJECT HAS THE DESIRED GOAL OF DETERMINING THE ENTIRE HUMAN GENETIC CODE (DNA) CONSISTING OF 3 BILLION NUCLEOTIDE BASES. BECAUSE OF THE EXPECTED SIZE OF THE GENOME DATABASE(S), NEW TECHNOLOGIES THAT PROVIDE COST-EFFECTIVE AND TIME-EFFECTIVE SEARCHING, INTERPRETATION, AND ANALYSIS WILL BE REQUIRED. ONE VERY PROMISING APPROACH TO THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN THE APPLICATION OF GRAMMARS TO THE "GENETIC LANGUAGE" AS EXPRESSED BY DNA. IN ESSENCE, THE GENETIC CODE CAN BE SEARCHED USING A GENETIC GRAMMAR. THESE GRAMMARS HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED USING THE COMPUTER LANGUAGE PROLOG ON SINGLE WORKSTATION COMPUTERS. THE APPROACH IS CALLED PARSING, WHICH IS SIMILAR TO DIAGRAMMING ENGLISH SENTENCES AS MEANS TO DETERMINE THE GRAMMAR, BUT THE GRAMMAR IS BASED ON BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY NOT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DISTRIBUTED OR PARALLEL PROLOG, THE OPPORTUNITY FOR RAPID AND CONCURRENT LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF DNA SEQUENCES USING MULTIPLE COMPUTING ELEMENTS IS POSSIBLE. PHASE I SEEKS TO DETERMINE THE FEASIBILITY OF COMBINING N-PARALLEL/PROLOG, GRAMMAR BASED SEARCHING, AND PARALLEL COMPUTERS AS MEANS OF EFFICIENTLY AND QUICKLY SEARCHING THE GENOME DATABASE. BY COMBINING THESE TECHNOLOGIES, THE COLOSSAL HUMAN GENOME INFORMATION BANK CAN BECOME EASILY AND ECONOMICALLY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PHARMACEUTICAL, BIOTECHNICAL, AND ACADEMIC SECTORS OF ECONOMY.