GENISYS
General Identification System

Genisys started as Nemisys, Nematode Identification System, back in 1986, as a joint project between a biologist (R. Fortuner, then at California Department of Food and Agriculture) and two computer scientists (J. Diederich and J. Milton, from University of California at Davis).

The object of Nemisys was to design a computer system that would make it possible for those with ordinary knowledge of nematodes (and not only expert taxonomists) to identify these plant parasites to the species level. Nemisys became Genisys when we realized that the concepts and tools could be used also to identify any biological species.

The basic idea behing Nemisys/Genisys was to create a formated set of identification characters (a schema), then establish databases with species descriptions according to this schema, and finally provide a set of identification tools based on these databases.

Genisys was novel in that it introduced the schema concept and it provided also a set of tools that would allow the user to follow any approach to identification. The tools would include all existing dichotomous "keys", probabilistic tools, Delta-based tools, and novel tools such as tools based on a new concept, the promorph, that would facilitate identification by "instant recognition", an approach previously used only by specialists in the art.

We tried to obtain funding for Nemisys, then for Genisys, but, except for a small grant from CDFA that made it possible to build and test a pilot version of "Terminator", we were unable to get any grants from National Science Foundation, UNESCO, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Then the project suffered when one of us (RF) quit his job and returned to France where he was unable to find a position as a nematologist. We tried to continue publishing some papers and work on the project but Genisys finally died when the other two members retired in 2005.

What remains from the Nemisys/Genisys effort are several novel concepts, presented in a number of articles (list), plus the Terminator and a schema for Tylenchida.

The Terminator was a tool for extracting formatted characters out of an unformatted text. Starting from descriptions published in the literature, Terminator recognized words from the schema (list of characters) and tried to transform a plain English sentence into a piece of formatted data to be placed in a Genisys database. Most of the Work was done automatically by the tool, but a human operator was present for solving unresolved parts in the description. A prototype was built (thanks to a grant from CDFA) and proved the concept to be valid and usable in practice. No funds were available for developing the actual full size tool.

The schema was the list of all of the characters recognized in published nematode species descriptions. A first schema was built for the nematode order Tylenchida. It was used successfully by Terminator. It was planed to use Terminator for automatic updates of the schema, whereas any piece of data found by Terminator in a published description and identified as such by the operator would be added to the schema. Further occurences of a similar piece of data would then be recognized automatically by Terminator without any action from the operator.

The Nemisys/Genisys project is dead, but it is hoped that someone will be interested by of its concepts and pick up the work where we left it.

The Tylenchida Schema
Terminator

Other concepts:


For any enquiry on Genisys, please contact R. Fortuner at:
La Cure, 86420 Verrue, France,
Email: fortuner@wanadoo.fr
Tel: (33) *5 49 50 41 90