A deductive database system for analyzing human nucleotide sequence data.

The analysis of the human genome is one of the most significant topics in both biology and medical science. There is a growing need for a well-designed database system for searching and analyzing the human genome data. We developed a deductive database system to search and analyze nucleotide sequence data derived from the GenBank primates data. A deductive database system is a next generation one and it contains an inference mechanism that can handle problems beyond the capabilities of classical database systems. Database queries are described in logical rules. These rules are simple even for molecular biologists who are not experts in computer programs because they are declarative and do not require the procedural commands that are usually used in computer programs. Furthermore, queries based on logical rules are powerful enough to express complicated biological problems. Particularly, recursive rules are suitable for examining secondary structures of nucleotide sequences. In our analysis of TfR's IRE, we noted five stem-and-loop structures.