Flexible, efficient and interactive retrieval for supporting in-silico studies of endobacteria

Studying the interactions between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMFs) and their symbiotic endobacteria has potentially strong impacts on the development of new biotechnology applications. The analysis of genomic data and syntenies is a key technique for acquiring information about phylogenetic relationships and metabolic functions of such organisms. In this paper we describe a case-based retrieval tool, which supports customized comparative genomics searches, and which is part of a modular architecture meant to support insilico genome sequence analysis, being developed within the project BIOBITS. From a methodological viewpoint, the tool takes advantage of an abstraction technique similar to Temporal Abstractions, thus allowing to neglect un-relevant details. Retrieval is made flexible by the use of such multi-level abstractions, and efficient by the use of proper taxonomical index structures. Moreover, end-users are allowed to progressively relax or refine their queries, in an interactive way. A case study taken from the application domain is used to illustrate the approach.