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Integrated Bioinformatics System: Pete Smietana, Biosearch, Inc., 1985
The following is a copy of a drawing from presentations
made at the Scientific Computing and Automation Conference, Pete
Smietana, Atlantic City, New Jersey, May 1-3, 1985
Title 1: An Intelligent-Systems Approach for Automated Peptide Synthesis
Title 2: Interfacing Computers to Automated Chemical Instruments
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| Even though Bioinformatics was not a term used in 1985 like
it is today, this was an integrated system that combined public Protein and
DNA databases using a modem as the network connection. The above system
represents a Peptide Synthesis Workstation, but it was also used for DNA
synthesis. Users would access the public databases for sequences to be
synthesized and then download them to a database file. The system included
an electronic laboratory notebook that contained the sequence, other
downloaded information and synthesis tracking data. It also had an expert
system language for writing instrument control protocols and for
analyzing the downloaded sequence to be synthesized for adjustments in
chemistry and coupling times. It performed a set of calculations on the
amount of bases or amino acids needed for the synthesis as well as the
reagent volumes and the times when the reservoirs would need to be refilled.
The system could control 1-8 DNA or Peptide synthesis instruments at a time.
The architecture of today's Bioinformatics systems which use high
speed servers, workstations and networks with new types
of instrumentation, exponentially growing databases and powerful data mining
tools share a history with systems like the
above system developed at Biosearch. |
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