Grid Computing for Bioinformatics: An Implementation of a User-Friendly Web Portal for ASTI’s In Silico Laboratory

Abstract

Bioinformatics is an important discipline that is fast emerging in academic research and industrial applications, and thereby, one of the areas identified to benefit from Grid and cluster computing. Bioinformatics research can be significantly boosted by utilizing a computing Grid shared across multiple academic and research institutions. However, the setback in accessing Grid resources is the interface. The interface between the researcher and the technology is commonly done through a command line.

Hence, the Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI) developed a webbased interface to enable a user-friendly way to access the Philippine e-Science Grid and the Banyuhay cluster of the ASTI high-performance computing (HPC) facility. ASTI deployed the OGCE Web portal. It comes with pre-existing portlets which we complemented with custom JSR 168-based portlets for searching the GenBank and for running applications using the Torque/OpenPBS job scheduler. Given that scientific tools can be difficult to install, it is particularly helpful for the researchers to be able to use these tools through a Web-based user interface. This paper highlights the existing applications available on ASTI's HPC facility with a Web-based interface.