Some Issues on Biological DBs: Data Integration and Mining

The usage of database technology has become essential in almost any research task in biology. There are plenty of examples of this usage, among one of the most important is the complete decoding of the human genome achieved in recent years, a task that could not have been completed in such a short time without the help of computers, and in particular, database technology. Its usage is nowadays so diffuse in many areas of biology, that databanks containing biological data are now commonly termed “biological databases”. Among many of the issues that biological databanks face today, this article concentrates particularly on two: the multiplicity of sources and mining useful data from them. A brief description of each of the problems and possible solutions are provided.