Chinook is a peer-to-peer (P2P) bioinformatics service. The goal of the Chinook platform is to facilitate exchange of analysis techniques within a local community and/or worldwide. Chinook operates by turning command-line applications into web services (or RMI services) which are broadcast over a virtual network. Currently, there are over 25 analysis services that have been made "Chinook-ready". These range from alignment to regulation prediction algorithms. Furthermore, Chinook is designed to make it extremely easy to add new services. This is facilitated using XML and/or a GUI.
Chinook is funded by Genome Canada as part of the Bioinformatics of Mammalian Gene Regulation grant. Stephen Montgomery is a Ph.D. graduate student in Genetics at the University of British Columbia. He is funded by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. His work is performed primarily at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre as part of the Gene Regulation Informatics team. Steven Jones is the Head of Bioinformatics for the CMSGSC. He is a Scholar of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.