Abstract: The current invention provides a visual or audio-visual programming environment for life science and bioinformatics. It is based on the VIBE platform, which is a flexible, extensible, and integrated workflow construction and management platform. The current invention enables researchers to consolidate molecular profiling data from complementary experimental techniques, intelligently reduce the volume of the data, construct disease-specific molecular fingerprints, construct relationship networks among functionally significant genomic, transcriptomic, metabonomic, and proteomic data, integrate information from existing biological databases into those networks, optimize the process through iterative feedback loops, and to generate and validate hypotheses based on the above process. The uses of this integrative, systems-based approach include, but are not limited to, the identification of potential biomarkers, characterization and classification of diseases and pathogens, and discovery of drug targets.

Abstract: The current invention is a visual or audio-visual programming environment for life science and bioinformatics developed for educational purposes. This programming environment incorporates novel educational features including: an integrated overview page, quick reference guide, introductory video, hot-linked glossary, intelligent personalized tutor, library of primers, multimedia tutorials, entertainment features, educational error messages, tracking system(s), multimedia assessment(s), and a lesson planner. The supporting client-server as well as client-only architecture includes drag-and-drop workflow pipeline construction for bioinformatics analysis using built-in user-defined or third party services (modules) as well as a software development kit (SDK), sharing and auto-update utility.