Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
database server, data are sent to a computer where they may be stored for a few microseconds or
for a decade before they are output to a printer or monitor. When computers are configured as a
communication device, the users who generate the data tend to be different from the users who
receive the results, and the response time may be hours or days.
The difference between e-mail and a typical biological database is that contribution to biological
databases such as GenBank are meant for others, but the identity of the recipients is unknown and
largely unknowable by the sender. Unlike an e-mail that is automatically deleted by the server after
the e-mail is read, the data in a biological database is considered permanent or at least not altered
by the process of accessing the data.
The communications of sequencing and protein structure information is hindered because of the lack
of a standard format for creating and storing gene data, even within companies. Several contenders
for the standard include Gene Expression Markup Language (GEML), based on the eXtensible Markup
Language (XML), and Microarray Markup Language (MAML). The latter is based on collaboration
between the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Stanford University, and the European
Bioinformatics Institute.
