Resumen
The article presents information on encoding, storage and retrieval of data stored in a digital library relating to Human Genome Project. A biological digital library, GenBank consists of over eight million DNA sequences of varying quality from thousands of species, containing important genes and repetitive junk. Within the DNA are coded genes that when translated yield proteins. It fails for DNA and protein because symbol order is paramount, and matching must be robust in the presence of mutations. This necessitates a different set of techniques from those developed for text. Another data type is structure. The 13,000 three-dimensional structures for proteins painstakingly determined in laboratories around the world are archived in the Protein Data Bank. Each structure contains hundreds of atom coordinates, and finding similar structures involves computationally expensive geometrical alignment. In future more work in medicine will be done in the digital library rather than at the lab bench. Structuring and providing access to the biological digital library is thus crucial to the future of medicine and science.