Poster and Computer Demonstration

Plant & Animal Genomes XVIII Conference January 9-13, 2010 Town & Country Convention Center San Diego, CA

C924 : Poster and Demo

Plant Ontology: Databases And Applications

Justin L Elser , Laurel Cooper , Pankaj Jaiswal

Botany and Plant Pathology Oregon State University

As data is generated from multiple plant genome projects and comparative genomics approaches, the vocabulary from group to group and species to species can be disparate. To enable researchers across species to draw conclusions from known or predicted experiments, we are developing controlled vocabularies (ontologies) to describe plant morphological, anatomical, and growth and developmental stages. Since the inception of the Plant Ontology (PO) database in 2003, plant biologists have been able to consistently use the PO terms in the database for annotation of tissue and/or growth stage specific expression of proteins, genes, and phenotypes that were observed in experiments. The PO terms documented number over 1,100, and there are over 500,000 associations, of which over 85% have been added within the last year. The terms and associations can be used in tandem with information (such as their biochemical characterization from their source database) to predict plant phenotypes, determine function of gene products, and possibly initiate new gene discovery with comparative genomics analysis. Future development by the Plant Ontology Consortium will be centered on adding additional species-specific terms to accommodate annotations from Rutaceae (citrus), Fabaceae (Medicago and soybean), Solanaceae (tomato), Triticeae (wheat, oat, and barley), and Populus (poplar).