BIRCH - Seamless Point and Click Data Pipelining for Bioinformatics

The BIRCH system addresses many of the bioinformatics challenges faced by laboratory researchers, including the difficulty of installing programs, the learning curves associated with using each program and conversion of file formats. BIRCH includes a wide array of programs, all of which are accessible through a growing family of BioLegato interfaces. BioLegato interfaces embody the real world objects with which biologists are familiar. These include: DNA (bldna), protein (blprotein), DNA alignment (bnalign), protein alignment (bpalign), NCBI keyword queries (blncbi), molecular markers (blmarker), phylogenetic trees (bltree). Each interface gives the user an intuitive view of the data, and allows the user to launch programs relevant to that type of data. As importantly, in many cases output from one step opens a new BioLegato instance. For example, a sequence translated by bldna would appear in a new blprotein window. In many cases, complex data pipelines are launched from simple menus, and all file conversion functions performed automatically. The programs in BIRCH are launched through the birch launcher, and the system is managed using the birchadmin tool. Almost all of the functionality of BioLegato interfaces is specified by BioLegato's easy to use language PCD. PCD allows for the rapid addition of new 3rd party programs to the BIRCH repertoire, or the rapid creation of new BioLegato interfaces for new types of data. BIRCH can be installed on Mac or Linux systems using an automated install wizard. BIRCH Web site: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb.