Scientific Workflow Interactions: An Application to Cancer Gene Identification

Diogo Munaro Vieira; Alexandre Heine; Elvismary Molina de Armas; Cristóvão Antunes de Lanna; Mariana Boroni; Sérgio Lifschitz

Diogo Munaro Vieira Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8401-8843
Alexandre Heine Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9235-4153
Elvismary Molina de Armas Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0606-5994
Cristóvão Antunes de Lanna Instituto Nacional de Câncer (INCA) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5946-4358
Mariana Boroni Instituto Nacional de Câncer (INCA) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3495-9917
Sérgio Lifschitz Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)

Resumo

Reproducibility, resilience, and large-scale data processing have become fundamental for developing scientific research, particularly in bioinformatics. One may consider the use of Scientific Workflow Management Systems (SWfMS) to address these topics. However, user interactivity during the execution of workflows, especially with a preliminary result generated by an inner workflow task, is still an issue. We present in this paper an architecture that meets the interactive requirements of these systems, allowing the development of a flexible layer for end users to interact directly with SWfMS. Besides presenting our software solution, we show an application in the context of cancer gene identification for drug design.