BB/D00652X/1 Grid Compatibility Datamanagement

Directed evolution is a technique where scientists use the power of natural evolution to change the behaviour and activity of a protein in the laboratory. These experiments generate very large amounts of data and in many cases a large proportion of this data is discarded, or not available to other scientists. The fact that this data is unavailable makes it very difficult to compare different experiments and to make these experiments more efficient. We aim to develop a computer based system that can store and integrate large amounts of data from these experiments and make it available to other scientists over a high speed computer network called the GRID. This network will make it possible for scientists to share and examine data stored in many different places in a simple way. Our system will automatically take data from experiments and process it to make it available on the GRID. We will use this system in two experiments. In one experiment we are making a large library of mutant HIV enzymes. These will be tested for resistance to new drugs being developed in the chemistry department. By doing this will be able to test drugs for potential resistance problems before they start to be used. In the second experiment we will select variants of an enzyme that cleaves a specific type of polysaccharide with changed selectivity. The data from these experiments will be automatically processed by the system into a format that can be made available via the GRID and also allow other scientists to process the data in different ways. When we publish the results of these experiments there will be links from the published paper all the way to the raw data.