POC Conf. Call 5-25-10

POC meeting, Webex Conference Call; Date: May 25th, 2010 10am (PDT)

Acceptance of the minutes from the 5-11-10 meeting? All in favor?

Agenda:

1. Report from the Cell Type Ontology Workshop on May 18th and 19th, 2010. Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME.

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

Cell Type Ontology Workshop Wiki page

2. Meeting with Plant Trait Ontology people.

Ramona has scheduled a tentative meeting with Dan Bunker (College of NJ) and Farshid Ahrestani (Columbia) to discuss possible collaborations with PO. Want to find out why they are developing their own ontology rather than using PO and working within OBO

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

Barry suggested that we reword the second half of the definition, because the final word 'it' was ambiguous about what it was referring to, and the use of the word 'other' was unclear. We agreed that the second part of the definition about other floral structures should go into the comments section. Started to discuss whether or not the seed should be included as part of the definition (fruit contains seed), but ran out of time. To be continued next meeting.

2. Embryo (See SF Tracker: embryo)

Discussion of embryo was postponed until next meeting.

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.

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.

Our one page write up has been selected for a 'flash update talk' along with the poster. Final revisions were submitted Friday May 14th.

* 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 June 1st at 10am PDT.