Revision history aware repositories of computational models of biological systems

Background: Building repositories of computational models of biological systems ensures that published models are available for both education and further research, and can provide a source of smaller, previously verified models to integrate into a larger model. One problem with earlier repositories has been the limitations in facilities to record the revision history of models. Often, these facilities are limited to a linear series of versions which were deposited in the repository. This is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, there are many instances in the history of biological systems modelling where an ‘ancestral’ model is modified by different groups to create many different models. With a linear series of versions, if the changes made to one model are merged into another model, the merge appears as a single item in the history. This hides useful revision history information, and also makes further merges much more difficult, as there is no record of which changes have ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Andrew K. Miller, Tommy Yu, Randall Britten, Mike T. Cooling, James R. Lawson, Dougal Cowan, Alan Garny, Matt D. B. Halstead, Peter J. Hunter, David P. Nickerson, Geoff Nunns, Sarala M. Wimalaratne, Poul M. F. Nielsen
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Biological Systems, BMCBI 2011, Earlier Repositories, Revision History