Poster: Bioinformatics

Abs # 864: Design and applications of unified controlled vocabularies for describing and comparing phenotypes and gene expression in Angiosperms

Presenter:	Ilic, Katica
Authors	Stein, Lincoln  (A)   McCouch, Susan R (B)   Kellogg, Elisabeth  (D)   Rhee, Seung Y (C)   Jaiswal, Pankaj  (B)   Stevens, Peter  (D)   Doreen Ware,   (A)   Polacco, Mary  (E)   Ilic, Katica  (C)   Vincent, Leszek  (E)   Reiser, Leonore  (C)   Sachs, Marty  (F)   Zapata, Felipe  (D)   Avram, Shulamit  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724 (B): Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (C): Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, CA 94305 (D): University of Missouri at St. Louis, St. Louis MO 63121 (E): University of Missouri - Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211 (F): Maize Genetic Cooperation - Stock Center, Department of Crop Sciences - University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801
Web Site:	http://www.plantontology.org

With a rapid expansion and complexity of plant genomic databases, a unified common platform is needed to permit cross-database communication. One current obstacle is the variable terminology used to describe plant structure and development in each database. Creating a defined generic set of terms that would uniformly describe flowering plant anatomy and development can solve this problem. Such a common vocabulary (ontology) would integrate existing species-specific vocabulary terms into unified flowering-plants ontologies, providing a semantic framework for meaningful cross-species queries across databases such as Gramene, TAIR, Maize GDB and others.The Plant Ontology Consortium (POC) (www.plantontology.org) is a collaborative effort of several plant databases and experts in plant systematics, botany and genomics. The goal of the POC is to develop a common set of controlled vocabularies to describe anatomical and developmental stages in both experimentally and agronomically important species. Currently, the first task of the POC is efficient integration of ontologies for Arabidopsis, maize and rice anatomy, thus spanning the dicot/monocot divide. In coming years, we will extend this controlled vocabulary to encompass legumes, Solanaceae and other plant families. The first publicly released version of plant anatomy ontology will be presented as well as examples of cross-species queries and annotations using PO terms. Organizing principles and rules followed in developing the plant anatomy ontology will be summarized. The project is supported by National Science Foundation grant No. 0321666 to the Plant Ontology Consortium.