Assessment of the risk requires access to a variety of heterogeneous biological databases and analytical tools. FASTSNP (function analysis and selection tool for single nucleotide polymorphisms) is a web server that allows users to efficiently identify the SNPs most likely to have functional effects. It prioritizes SNPs according to 13 phenotypic risks and putative functional effects, such as changes to the transcriptional level, pre-mRNA splicing, protein structure and so on. A unique feature of FASTSNP is that the prediction of functional effects is always based on the most up-to-date information, which FASTSNP extracts from 11 external web servers at query time using a team of re-configurable web wrapper agents (2,3). These web wrapper agents automate web browsing and data extraction and can be easily configured and maintained with a tool that uses a machine learning algorithm. This allows users to configure/repair a web wrapper agent without programming. Another benefit of using web wrapper agents is that FASTSNP is extendable, so we can include new functions by simply deploying more web wrapper agents. In this manner, we have already built several new functionalities, such as the inclusion of information on haplotype blocks from HapMap (4).
