MS-Analyzer: preprocessing and data mining services for proteomics applications on the Grid

Mass spectrometry proteomics data contain much information about cell functions and disease conditions. The discovery of such information is enabled by the combined use of novel bioinformatics tools and data mining techniques requiring the integration of huge data sources and the composition of different software tools. The main phases of such emerging applications comprise the loading, management, preprocessing, mining, and visualization of spectra, as well as the analysis of discovered knowledge models. The collection, storage, and analysis of spectra produced in different laboratories can make use of the services of computational Grids, which offer efficient data transfer primitives, effective management of large data stores, and large computing power. In this paper we present MS-Analyzer, a Grid-based software platform for the integrated management and analysis of spectra data. MS-Analyzer provides efficient spectra management through a specialized spectra database, and supports the semantic composition of spectra preprocessing services and data mining services to analyze spectra on the Grid.