POC Conf. Call 5-11-10

POC meeting, Webex Conference Call; Date: May 11th, 2010 10am (PDT)

Acceptance of the minutes from last weeks meeting? All in favor?

Agenda:

1. Discussion of the Cell Type Ontology and our plant cell terms in preparation for the workshop in Bar Harbor. (Cell Type Ontology Workshop on May 18th and 19th, 2010. Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME)

Questions to Consider/Discuss:

• Introduction to the Cell Type Ontology- what is it and what are their goals?

Browse Cell Type Ontology on BioPortal

Cell Type Ontology, Genome Biology, 2005

Cell Type Ontology Workshop

• Laurel and Ramona will attend and will give a 10-15 minute presentation

-Plant cell child terms: organization, completeness, definitions. Are we happy with them, or do we plan on a major overhaul?

-- current PO browser with all cell types expanded

- List of PO plant cell types that are not in the Cell.obo file (thanks Rex!). Do we want to request that these terms be included in the CL?

- Need to think about tissues and organs that we and CL might want to use for cross-product definitions.

- Should we aim for complete redundancy between cells in PO and plant cells in CL?

• Laurel, Ramona and Rex had a brief discussion about plant cells at the end of the meeting. Rex said he made the list of terms that were in the PO but not the CL by going through the two ontologies term by term. Ramona said there do not appear to be any terms that are in the CL but not the PO, but we need to check systematically.

• The two ontologies have similar structure, with a few differences, probably changes that were made after terms were imported into the CL. It might be better to have a more hierarchical structure so there are not so many direct children of plant cell.

• In addition to cell by organism, the CL also lists cells by type. Right now, it gamete is the only haploid plant cell, but this leaves out all the cells in gametophytes. May also want to add triploid cells of endosperm under polyploid cell.

Items carried over from last week's agenda:

1. fruit (See SF Tracker: fruit)

Current def'n: The seed-bearing structure in angiosperms, formed from the ovary after flowering.

Proposed new def'n: A collective plant structure that contains a post-fertilization stage gynoecium and any other structures of the flower that mature with it. (Comment: Exceptions are cases of parthenocarpy, apomixis or other hormone-induced conditions.

Note that we may need to define parthenocarpy at some point (or put in a dbx ref for it). Dbx ref to parthenogenesis: Medical subject heading Ontology D010312

2. Embryo (See SF Tracker: embryo)

Current def'n: A young sporophyte contained within a seed. [source: APWeb:Glossary, GR:pj]

Proposed def'n: A sporophyte in the early stages of growth and differentiation, consisting of precursor tissues for the leaves, stem (see epicotyl/hypocotyl) and root (see radicle).

We could mention the cotyledons in a comment- specific to flowering plants

(2) See Cultured embryo PO:0000010 for definition of in vitro plant embryo

(3) Adventitious embryos do not arise from zygotes -add a comment?

Relationships:

(1) has no is_a parent, is_a sporophyte, which makes it a whole plant through transitivity (2) develops_from zygote (see comment above) Usually (3) embryo contained_in archegonium (works for land plants, not charophytes (doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03054.x)

4. Upcoming Conferences and Meetings: Updates'

* POC meeting/Annotation workshop to be held in Corvallis on June 29th/30th.

Pankaj suggested we plan on meeting for two days. Dennis can make June 30th, but has to be back in NYC early on July 1st, so we will try to meet June 29th and 30th.

Alejandra cannot travel that day -- can attend via conference call.

Ramona will be in Portland June 26-29, will request that her talk be scheduled for the 27th or 28th. Ramona has sent a request to schedule her talk on the 27th or 28th. Barry will be in France this week and can't attend. What about Chris?

Pankaj would like to also include Aaron Liston (OSU), Richard Halsey (OSU) and Quentin Cronk (UBC; http://cronklab.wikidot.com/quentin-cronk).

* Bio-Ontologies 2010: Semantic Applications in Life Sciences. July 9th and 10th, 2010, Boston, Mass. Satellite Interest Group (SIG) meeting preceding the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Laurel, Ramona are registered.

-Flash updates, up to 1 page: (short talks (5 min) giving the salient new developments on existing public ontologies) -Poster abstracts, up to 1 page (posters will be up for 2 days, with at least 1 poster session) Poster authors can also do a flash update.

Laurel submitted the 1 pager on Friday April 16th to Bio-Ontologies meeting for a poster presentation and possibly a short flash update talk. We will be notified by May 7th if we are doing a flash update.

* American Society of Plant Biology (ASPB) July 31-Aug 4th 2010, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Laurel, Pankaj going, PO Poster presentation and Annotation Workshop with Gramene.

Laurel is looking into the possibility of hosting a booth with other database groups. SGN and maizeGDB are interested and she will check with TAIR and Gramene. The estimated costs are $1600 for the plain booth (no carpet, electricity or tables). This could be shared or PJ said POC could host it.

We should prepare a brochure to distribute, similar to the one Gramene has.

Annotation workshop with Gramene is scheduled for Saturday July 31, 8am-12pm. more details TBA

* International Botanical Congress (IBC2011). July 23rd-30th 2011, Melbourne, Australia. Important dates (http://www.ibc2011.com/Dates.htm):

Dennis and Alejandra are already planning to attend IBC2011 and speak in other symposia.

Ramona circulated a proposal that was submitted on Thursday April 29th and contacted the organizers about whether or not it is possible to get a room with internet for outreach activities.

Pankaj will be co-organizer with Ramona. Laurel and Ramona are interested in going and speaking if funds are available.

Ramona has contacted Angelica Cibrian (Harvard) from the Genomics of Seed Plants project and she is interested in being a potential speaker, will contact other possible speakers in Australia if the proposal is accepted.

• Latin American Congress of Botany (http://www.botanica-alb.org/X_Congreso/index.php). La Serena, Chile, October 4-10; MAG: "I am not sure about due dates for this one due to the earthquake".

from 3-23-10: Dennis is attending LACB. We will consider having a presentation at this meeting. Alejandra will not be able to attend.

• Annotation workshops to be held at NYBG in fall 2010. Date TBD. Will invite outside experts, scientists, students and postdocs.

8. Next meeting scheduled for Tuesday May 25th at 10am PDT.