Bioinformatics integration and agent technology.

Vast amounts of life sciences data are scattered around the world in the form of a variety of heterogeneous data sources. The need to be able to co-relate relevant information is fundamental to increase the overall knowledge and understanding of a specific subject. Bioinformaticians aspire to find ways to integrate biological data sources for this purpose and system integration is a very important research topic. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of important integration issues that should be considered when designing a bioinformatics integration system. The currently prevailing approach for integration is presented with examples of bioinformatics information systems together with their main characteristics. Here, we introduce agent technology and we argue why it provides an appropriate solution for designing bioinformatics integration systems.