Schema design for a molecular biology laboratory information management system

The development of the conceptual scheme for the database supporting the laboratory activities for the mapping phase of the Human Genome Project at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is discussed. This entailed recording the instances of molecular biology experiments, the data generated from the experiments, and the inventories of biological stocks and chemical compounds. The authors discuss the nature of the application, the major modeling problems they confront, and the methodology they have adopted to address some of these problems. The methodology they adopted combines elements of an extended entity-relation model with those of a data-flow model.<>