An Overview of the ERATO Systems Biology Workbench Project

Abstract

The goal of the ERATO Systems Biology Workbench (SBW) project is to create an integrated, easy-to-use software environment that enables sharing of resources for systems biology. Our initial focus is on achieving interoperability between 7 existing simulators. Our long-term goal is to develop a flexible and adaptable environment that provides the ability to interact with a wide variety of software tools applicable to the systems biology field including databases and experimental devices. We place high value on ease of use and ease of extensibility as important qualities of software for use in biological investigations. The software products of this project will be open source, and portable to Windows and Linux. The Systems Biology Workbench is a vehicle for collaboration between developers of bioinformatics technology. We are actively seeking other collaborators to extend the workbench. The motivation is to reduce the time spent by developers both creating software infrastructure and creating tools that exist in a similar form in other packages, allowing developers to concentrate on new algorithm and model development.