While DNA sequencing in the Genome Project is occurring fairly systematically, biotechnology companies have focused onsequencing regions thought to contain particular disease genes.The client-server DNA sequence analysis system, GRAIL, is themost accurate and widely used computer-based system for locatingand characterizing genes in DNA sequences, but it is notaccessible to many biotechnology environments. The GRAIL clientsoftware and graphical displays have been developed for high-endUNIX-based computer workstations. While such workstations arestandard equipment in universities and large companies, personalcomputers (PCs) and Macintosh computers are more prevalent withinthe biotechnology community. This Phase I project will designMacintosh- and Windows-based GRAIL clientserver prototypes forhuman and other model organisms with error tolerant algorithms.Because parallel processing is a viable solution for searchingthrough the ever-increasing volume of data, Phase I will alsoinclude the parallelization of genQuest, the sequence comparisonserver portion of the GRAIL system. This will be accomplished byusing PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) to facilitate the 25 development of genQuest servers on networks of PCs, workstations,and other innovative, high-performance computer architectures. Anticipated Results /Potential Commercial Applications as described by the awardee: Prototype graphical interface systemsfor Macintosh, DOS Windows, and Windows that mimic the functionand operation of the current GRAIL-genQuest clients will enable alarger portion of biotechnology companies to make use of theGRAIL suite of analysis tools. Parallel genQuest servers wouldincrease the response time for searches and increase the usercapacity per server. Such fast distributed computing solutionsimprove the cost-performance ratio and make parallel searchersmore affordable to the biotechnology community.
