TIPS Proposal Draft
This page was created so multiple authors can work on this draft without using email, and older versions will be archived. (RW 11-17-2010)
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In the age of OMICs, onotolgies are quickly becoming an indespensible tool for data curation, access and analysis. Over the past ten years, the Gene Ontology (GO) has developed the ontologies (structured, controlled vocabularies) to describe molecular functions, biological processes and cellular localizations associated with specific genes and gene products, developed a standard protocol for annotating genes with GO terms, and amassed over xxx association between GO terms and genes, laying the foundation for computationally driven functional annotation and comparative analysis. The plant community adopted the GO approach for annotation of the Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa genomes, but soon realized that in order to utilize the full potential of the large-scale analysis of OMICs datasets, it would be necessary to annotate gene expression and phenotypic datasets using ontologies for plant anatomy and growth and developmental stages. Early efforts by separate research groups were merged to create the Plant Ontology (PO) in 200x. The PO, like other taxon-specific ontologies, allows functional annotation data to be associated with the spatial and temporal expression of genes and with observed phenotypes, something that is not possible with GO.
Examples of analysis that you can do with PO or similar, but can’t do with GO.
Changes in PO and how it is now more applicable to cross-species comparisons: -Incorporation of non-angiosperm models and angiosperm non-models -flower development. Analysis example (maybe for box): Compare gene expression data sets from Arabidopsis and rice: find common datasets- one each for a tissue and and growth stage. Sources: from Genevestigator -Researchers in model organism have benefited from structured vocabularies and other bioniformatics tools. Time for non-model organism researchers to take advantage of the same tools -leaf development across taxa,
Other uses of biological ontologies: Hot topics in plant genomics and how the PO can help research in those areas rice data sets described above, new genomes being sequenced others Use of ontologies in systematics (character descriptions) and biodiversity exploration, see Teleost Anatomy Ontology paper. Crop improvement for non-model species (trait descriptions and gene expression as in SGN or Generation Challenge Program, gene exploration for non-model species based on model organism database in PO) PO as teaching tool Conclusion Engage community, encourage folks to provide more annotations Future directions
