title: BIAS: Bioinformatics Integrated Application Software.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We introduce a development platform especially tailored to Bioinformatics research and software development. BIAS (Bioinformatics Integrated Application Software) provides the tools necessary for carrying out integrative Bioinformatics research requiring multiple datasets and analysis tools. It follows an object-relational strategy for providing persistent objects, allows third-party tools to be easily incorporated within the system and supports standards and data-exchange protocols common to Bioinformatics.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  BIAS is an OpenSource project and is freely available to all interested users at http://www.mcb.mcgill.ca/~bias/. This website also contains a paper containing a more detailed description of BIAS and a sample implementation of a Bayesian network approach for the simultaneous prediction of gene regulation events and of mRNA expression from combinations of gene regulation events.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  hallett@mcb.mcgill.ca.
authors.affiliation: McGill Centre for Bioinformatics, 3775 University Street, McGill University, Montreal, Canada H3A 2B4.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Finak
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Godin
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hallett
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pepin
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Rajabi
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D011381:Programming Languages; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface