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Summary
The
“eScience” goal of Sangam project is to use web services
composition to integrate data concerning the coupling of stressors,
molecules, and brain regions involved in the “stress response”.
Accordingly, we designed a Graphical User
Interface prototype that would accommodate query and retrieval for
these three data types. The
proposed GUI provides term-based searches for Molecule, Stressor and
Brain Region. Scientist can also navigate among stressor, molecule or
brain region to find the precise information in any one of them along
with the related data in other two. This GUI is designed to integrate diverse web-services intelligently so
as to serve the information needs of neuroscientists. Such web-services
currently include KEGG and NCBI
and, pending permission and/or full development, will also include NeuroScholar,
NeuArtII and BAMS.
Our GUI design decisions rested on
considerations for its end users i.e. neuroscientists who are interested
in looking up data concerning the stress response.
Such considerations included having 1) a simple, easy-to-view
interface that dynamically changes in response to user queries; 2) an
environment that was intuitive and easy to navigate; 3) an interface
that maximized the presentation of data content for all three data types
without emphasizing the presentation of one data type at the expense of
another. GUI is designed in such a way that other features can be added
to each of the three data query/retrieval environments (Molecule,
Stressor, Brain Region) without compromising the navigability of the
interface. We
went through multiple iterations to introduce the current version of the
GUI. As it involved lot of discussion that how to use the available
resources and framework to its fullest so that we can satisfy the
maximum possible requirements of a neuroscientist. It required balancing
the needs of neuroscientist, architecture of web-services and available
web-services.
We expect this GUI to evolve in future according to the needs of
our neuroscientists. We aim to refine the GUI by extending its
functionality in a number of ways.
For example, it may be useful for scientists to be able to access
the three-dimensional structure of nucleotide or protein sequences
retrieved in the interface’s Molecule environment.
Such structures could be displayed within the Molecule view
panels of the interface in much the same way that the Swanson Atlas Maps
can be called up within the Brain Region environment of the interface. Goals
for
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