Querying a Genome Database Using Graphs

One problem facing biology today is that information is not integrated, not connected. Graphs are a way of connecting together objects in the world: to integrate biological data. Graphs are defined by computer scientists and mathematicians as a collection of nodes and edges --real world objects and connections between them. For graphs to be useful, they must be tailored to the needs of geneticists. We have tailored the definition of graphs to support the requirements of genome mapping databases at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Center and present here how graphs can be used to query a genome database.