A database system for constructing, integrating, and displaying physical maps of chromosome 19

Efforts are underway at numerous sites around the world to construct physical maps of all human chromosomes. These maps will enable researchers to locate, characterize, and eventually understand the genes that control human structure and function. Accomplishing this goal will require a staggering amount of innovation and advancement of biological technology. The volume and complexity of the data already generated requires a sophisticated array of computational support to collect, store, analyze, integrate, and display it in biologically meaningful ways. The Human Genome Center at Livermore has spent the last 6 years constructing a database system to support its physical mapping efforts on human chromosome 19. Our computational support team is composed of experienced computer professionals who share a common pragmatic primary goal of rapidly supplying tools that meet the ever-changing needs of the biologists. Most papers describing computational support of genome research concentrate on mathematical details of key algorithms. However, in this paper we would like to concentrate on the design issues, tradeoffs, and consequences from the point of view of building a complex database system to support leading-edge genomic research. We introduce the topic of physical mapping, discuss the key design issues involved in our databases, and discuss the use of this data by our major tools (DNA fingerprint analysis and overlap computation, contig assembly, map integration, and database browsing.) Given the advantage of hindsight, we discuss what worked, what didn`t, and how we will evolve from here. As early pioneers in this field we hope that our experience may prove useful to others who are now beginning to design and construct similar systems