iSpider was a BBSRC funded project to create an informatics platform for proteomics using Grid-based technologies, and to use this to address specific biological problems. The grantholders were Dr S. Hubbard, Dr Suzanne Embury, Professor Carole Goble CBE, Professor Norman Paton, Dr Robert Stevens and Prof Oliver of the University of Manchester. The project ran from July 2004 to June 2007.
The iSpider project developed three tools that make use of Taverna’s functionality and plugability to support the development of workflows, in particular for proteomics.
Much of the work has been done by Khalid Belhajjame and additional information can be found in his publications.
A tool for the identification and the characterisation of mismatches in scientific workflows
By using the Feta service registry and extending the capabilities of the Taverna Workbench, this tool provides a means for automatically identifying and characterising the mismatches that may arise between the constituent operations of an in silico experiments.
A tool for automatically inferring service annotations
This tool allows the derivation, in an automatic fashion, of information about the annotations of service parameters using existing tested-and-tried workflows. It has been evaluated using the workflow repository provided by myExperiment together with the myGrid ontology.
A system for querying multiple proteomics data sources
It supports the combined use of Grid data access (OGSA-DAI), Grid distributed querying (OGSA-DQP) and data integration (AutoMed) software tools to support distributed data analysis. This system has been used for providing an integrated access to four proteomics data sources, namely, gpmDB, PedroDB, PepSeeker and Pride.
