[Bioperl-l] organizing a gene family in memory

[Carnë Draug]

Hi

I need something to keep a bunch of genes belonging to the same family
organized. It is more than a plain hash since the family can be
divided into multiple ways (subfamilies, types and classes) that
overlap each other, but using a database seems overkill to me. I
couldn't find a module on CPAN that does it so I might write one if no
one suggests an alternative. Basically, with it I wanna be able to do
something like this

  my $histones = Bio::Family->new(
      -classes      => ['canonical', 'variant'],
      -types        => ['H2A', 'H2B', 'H3', 'H4'],
      -subfamilies => [ ... ],
  );

  $histones->add_member ($seqob,
      -class => 'canonical',
      -type  => 'H3',
  );

  @all_members = $histones->members;
  @canonicals  = $histones->class('canonical');

I already wrote a bit of POD for it
http://bpaste.net/show/UI6GbX5MWmCwGJWerGpq/ and would like some input
on its design before start coding, as I fear it might be too focused
for the problem I have at hand. Could someone give me some advice
about it?

I'm also thinking that maybe I should write some sort of general perl
module, outside the Bio::* namespace.

Thanks,
Carnë