Preece et al, CGRB 2011

Poster presented at the 2011 CGRB Fall Conference, Oregon State University, September 18th-19th, 2011.

Planteome Annotation Wiki: A Semantic Application for the Community Curation of Plant Genotypes and Phenotypes

Authors: Justin Preece, Justin Elser, Pankaj Jaiswal

Poster Abstract:

Two notable trends currently impacting biology curation are 1) the use of wikis to input, store, and disseminate research data and 2) the development of semantic technologies to facilitate higher-order data description and exploration. These separate developments, when brought together, have the potential to deliver on one promise of the "semantic web": structured, self-described data used to further scientific research and analysis. The Semantic MediaWiki extension (http://semantic-mediawiki.org/), when used in conjunction with Semantic Forms (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms), provides an avenue to create a semantically-driven, community-powered research platform on the web.

The Planteome Annotation Wiki implements these technology platforms to provide a user interface for annotation on the web, personal user accounts, a set of previously-curated annotations (from TAIR, Gramene, and the Plant Ontology Consortium), and a rigorous semantic data structure. The wiki also dynamically integrates data from other sites via web services: Gene Ontology and Plant Ontology terms, PubMed references, and taxonomic data. A bulk import utility accepting GAF annotation data has also been developed, and the wiki provides multi-format import, export, and semantic browsing and search capabilities. Future enhancements include an exploration of semantic inferencing capabilities using ontologies, a curatorial approval mechanism, and further data integration with other biowikis.