Group Type: Research Group

Group Chair(s): Abbas Farazdel, David S. Angulo

Group Secretary(s): Piotr Bala

Group Email: lsg-rg@ogf.org (Subscribe) (Archive by date)

The Life Sciences Grid (LSG) Research Group explores issues related to the integration of Information Technology with the Life Sciences on a grid infrastructure.

The Life Sciences Grid (LSG) Research Group explores issues related to the integration of Information Technology with the Life Sciences on a grid infrastructure.

The interface of life sciences with information technology is rich and offers tremendous opportunities and challenges for developing the grid. The initial charter will be broad by design, including all scales of biological processes, from atoms to populations, as well as issues of handling multiple scales of biological complexity. A breadth of grid technologies are necessary to handle the capture and initial manipulation of data from instruments and the images they produce, to the reduction of those data and deposition into databases, to the incorporation of those data into increasingly realistic simulations of biological processes, and to the integration of data from a variety of sources, separated by distance, by discipline, and by language.

In short, the LSG Research Group will be working at the interface of two revolutionary areas: biology and information technology. Included in this group will be the suite of biological informatics, including bioinformatics (genetic codes), neuroinformatics, pharmacoinformatics, medical informatics, etc.; structural genomics; and systems biology including understanding the cell itself. In addition, questions of biological diversity will be considered, which will draw upon informatics but bring in other areas such as environment and spatial information.

The interface between the life sciences and information technology is a rapidly developing branch of biology and is highly interdisciplinary, using techniques and concepts from informatics, statistics, mathematics, chemistry, biochemistry, physics, and linguistics. This interface derives knowledge from computer analysis of information stored in the biological processes, experimental results from various sources, patient statistics, public and private databases, and scientific literature.


Specific topics of interest include:
• Identifying different solution areas and classifying them
• Exploring possible reference architectures for each solution area
• Identify clear examples and the diverse use of the grid within the life sciences
• Discuss issues of access to data within life sciences
• Discuss state of standards, within subdisciplines and between subdisciplines.
• Identify how the grid is being challenged by the life sciences, and where there is need for activity

The Life Sciences Grid Research Group (LSG-RG) provides a forum for the above topics until sufficient maturity is reached that result in the formation of separate Working Groups or Research Groups for further exploration.

Objectives:
• Actively engage the community of life scientists and health care specialists in this activity
• Act as a liaison to the life scientists and health care specialists in general
• Recruit BioInformatics researchers to participate
• Facilitate Grid access to non-IT Life Sciences researchers
• Work together with different working groups in GGF and give imput into their standards and documents that apply to the life sciences
• Work together with different research groups in GGF and determine areas of common interest in research
• Develop requirements and use cases in the area of the Life Sciences and Health care.

• Discuss issues of access to data within life sciences
• Discuss state of standards, within subdisciplines and between subdisciplines.
• Identify how the grid is being challenged by the life sciences, and where there is need for activity

View Group Charter

Group's Gridforge Project