Object-Oriented Modelling in Molecular Biology

d of modelling in molecular biology and we have developed various tools to handle and study genomic sequences. We have been among the firsts to propose genomic data bases (Gautier et al., 1981), then to develop a Data Base Management System (DBMS) dedicated to the biological sequences: ACNUC (Gouy et al., 1985). In association with this data base, we have built the Analseq package (Jacobzone and Gautier, 1989) for sequence analysis. These two softwares are examples of systems in which it exist a strong separation between interrogation and analysis of the biological sequences. More recently, we have developed tools that integrate both biological and methodological knowledge. ColiGene is a modelling of E. coli genetics devoted to the analysis of relationships between genomic sequences and gene expressivity and MultiMap implements a formalization of genome maps allowing manipulation of localization informations with homology modelling in man and mouse. Modelling of biological knowledg