Study on Metadata Applications for Proteomics Data Integration

The integration of complex, fast changing biological data repositories can be potentially supported by Grid computing to enable distributed data analysis. The ISPIDER proteomics Grid provides an architecture supporting the combined use of Grid data access, Grid distributed querying and data integration software tools, which support distributed, heterogeneous biologic data integration and analysis. This paper introduces the ISPIDER Proteomics Grid, and discusses what kind of metadata can be used for expressing the multiplicity of data models and the data transformation and integration processes in the proteomics integration Grid, and how this metadata can be further used for supporting other data integration activities.