Navigating through the biological maze

Advances in genome science have created a surge of data. These data critical to scientific discovery are made available in thousands of heterogeneous public resources. Each of these resources provides biological data with a specific data organization, format, and quality, object identification, and a variety of capabilities that allow scientists to access, analyze, cluster, visualize and navigate through the datasets. The heterogeneity of biological resources and their increasing number make it difficult for scientists to exploit and understand them. Learning the properties of a new resource is a tedious and time-consuming process, often made more difficult by the many changes made on the resources (new or changed information, capabilities) that stress scientists keeping their knowledge up-to-date. Therefore many scientists master a few resources while ignoring others that may provide additional data and useful capabilities.