Modeling genomic data with type attributes, balancing stability and maintainability

Background  

Molecular biology (MB) is a dynamic research domain that benefits greatly from the use of modern software technology in preparing experiments, analyzing acquired data, and even performing "in-silico" analyses. As ever new findings change the face of this domain, software for MB has to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate these changes. At the same time, however, the efficient development of high-quality and interoperable software requires a stable model of concepts for the subject domain and their relations. The result of these two contradictory requirements is increased complexity in the development of MB software.