a multi-agent system for automated genomic annotation
Massive amounts of raw data are currently being generated by biologists while sequencing organisms. Outside of the largest, high-profile projects such as the Human Genome Project, most of this raw data must be analyzed through the piecemeal application of various computer programs and searches of various public web databases. Due to the inexperience and lack of training, both the raw data and any valuable derived knowledge will remain generally unavailable except in published textual forms. Multi-agent information gathering systems have a lot to contribute to these efforts, even at the current state of the art. We have used DECAF, a multi-agent system toolkit based on RETSINA and TAEMS, to construct a prototype multi-agent system for automated annotation and database storage of sequencing data for herpesviruses. The resulting system eliminates tedious and always out-of-date hand analyses, makes the data and annotations available for other researchers (or agent systems), and provides a level of query processing beyond even some high-profile web sites.
lessons learned from deployed agents information agents