Certain bioinformatics research, such as sequence alignment, alternative splicing, protein function/structure prediction, gene identify, bio-chip data analysis, and so on, requires massive computing power, which is hardly available in a single computing node. In order to facilitate bioinformatics research, we have designed and implemented a distributed and parallel computing environment with grid technology, in which, biologists can solve bioinformatics problems using distributed computing resources in parallel and reduce execution time. In this environment, the computing power and program information of computing nodes are described with XML documents. A web service named Local Resource Management Service is deployed on each computing node so that the distributed resources can be accessed in a uniform manner. With an API suite, biologists can use distributed computing resources in parallel easily in their applications. Further more, users can monitor the status of distributed resources dynamically on the portal. A real use case of alternative splicing is also presented, through which we have analyzed the usability, efficiency, and stability of the environment.

Bioinformatics grid has emerged to meet the sharp requirement for computation and storage resource in the bioinformatics research field. In this paper, a design of SOA-based bioinformatics grid system is put forward under the WSRF specification. It aggregates existing tools such as BLAST, wrapped as Web Services, through WS-ServiceGroup, and supports the development, deployment, execution and monitoring of complex bioinformatics grid application. Based on the supporting environment, applications can access bioinformatics resource in a transparent manner. This paper also presents a use case to show the process of workflow building, execution and monitoring.

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We find in our research work that existing Grid information service tools are deficient in aspect of aggregation mechanism of the same kind of resources. Based on the analysis, we propose a "Service GroupConcrete Service" concept for service management, based on which we can realize an efficient management of services and a consulting service for resource selection.