Wood Anatomy

Woody Plant Anatomy Workshop Planning Page:

What:

The PO is planning to host a workshop for developing a controlled vocabulary for wood development.

From Andrew Groover: "I just met with David and Jill and have the following proposal.

The wood anatomy ontology can serve as a prototype group for the more extensive project that Jill is leading for forest tree ontologies. The proposal is to get our group of expert wood anatomist together with Jill and at least one member from your group with experience in the process of developing ontologies. The expectation is that, because there is a long history of nomenclature for wood anatomy, this ontology should be rigorous and should come together relatively easily. Hopefully the experience would allow Jill to tackle more challenging ontologies in the future.

In addition to your mention of OSU, Cornell, and NYBG, offered venues for the meeting would also include UC Davis, or the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard.

If this proposal sounds reasonable, can you tell me how you would prefer to organize the meeting? Would someone from the plant ontology group lead the organization? If not I can get the meeting arranged but will need some more information from you (expected outcomes, typical length of meeting, travel reimbursement...).

Thanks for this great opportunity and I look forward to your reply.

Andrew

Who:

Should have 2-4 wood anatomy/development specialists plus 2 ontology experts from the PO group

People involved in the discussion so far:

• Aaron Liston [1]

• Andrew Groover: [2]

• Quenton Cronk, UBC

• Barb Lachenbruch

Also Suggested:

• Frederic Lens: who would bring his knowledge of the resources associated with the International Association of Wood Anatomist as well as his personal knowledge to the group (I also note that Barb is part of the IAWA council).

• Elisabeth Wheeler at NC State. Her personal knowledge of anatomy as well as the challenges associated with creating and maintaining a database would be quite useful. These two could also make sure that prior work is utilized fully and not needlessly repeated."

Note: Frederic would be coming from Europe and Quentin from UBC. Is there any restriction with international participants or flights that we need to consider?

• Mathias Kirst (suggested by QC "He has been investigating the phenotypic variation of wood for association studies and is intimately knowledgeable about the wood features of interest to genomics community").

• Rachel Spicer (suggested by AL: "she has expertise in both wood anatomy and development")

- Concurrently, we were contacted by:Jill Wegrzyn of the TreeGenes Database at UCDavis (email:jlwegrzyn@ucdavis.edu)

"The forest tree community (and in particular the conifers), are interested in collaborating with the Plant Ontology project to develop terms specific to our communities. I currently coordinate efforts on the TreeGenes database and will be leading efforts to integrate ontologies into our existing database.

In past conversations with members of the Plant Ontology team, I know we have discussed that direction can be provided in terms of how to begin this process within the community.

We are hoping to start with a general information/scope meeting during the upcoming PAG meeting and move from there.

Please let me know how we can start to move forward on this endeavor."

• Andrew is going to talk to David Neal and Jill on how to proceed

When:

TBD....

Where:

Proposed: meeting in Corvallis, at OSU

Andrew Groover suggested: "to keep down costs and have a nice venue - we could ask Ned Friedman if the group could meet at the Arnold Arboretum. They have a great new facility, and the group could take advantage of not only the conference room but also have access to microscopy and arboretum/herbarium/slide specimens. I think Ned has housing available as well.

-got confirmation from Ned Friedman that the Arnold Arboretum would be willing to host the meeting.