The Plant Ontology Consortium

该项目支持植物本体论联盟(POC)的运作。POC的目标是开发一套通用的受控词汇术语来描述实验植物和农学上重要的植物的解剖和发育阶段术语。我们已经从拟南芥和谷类开始，稍后将把这个本体论扩展到包括豆类、茄科和其他家族。同时，我们正在将这些术语应用于描述由参与机构维护的植物特有数据库中包含的基因和突变的任务，从而同时提炼本体论，并提供参考点来比较这些物种的基因和突变。该项目的更广泛的影响是它提供了一个植物发展的框架，允许研究人员在不同物种特有的资源上进行有意义的跨数据库查询，以发现植物发育中涉及的相似和不同的模式。例如，研究人员将能够获得影响植物茎发育的确切基因清单。研究界之间的互动将由一块“罗塞塔之石”促进，它弥合了它们在术语上的历史差异。这将使一种植物物种的研究成果更容易用于其他物种的研究，从而更好地了解植物生物学。这反过来将有助于创造新的作物品种，以满足不断增长的世界人口的食物需求，有助于开发治疗人类疾病的药物，并创造新类别的除草剂、杀虫剂和生物防治措施，以对抗抗药性杂草和害虫对世界农业日益增长的影响。该项目提供的成果包括：(A)描述植物解剖学的本体论；(B)描述植物发育阶段的本体论；(C)存储与来自多个参与者数据库的菌株、突变体和基因的植物本体论联系的网站；(D)举行一系列用户小组会议，提供教育和外联机会。

This project supports the operations of the Plant Ontology Consortium (POC). The goals of the POC are to develop a common set of controlled vocabulary terms to describe anatomic and developmental stage terms in both experimental and agronomically important plants. We have begun with Arabidopsis and cereals, and will later extend this ontology to encompass legumes, Solanaceae, and other families. Concurrently, we are applying these terms to the task of describing the genes and mutants that are contained within the plant-specific databases maintained by the participating institutions, thereby simultaneously refining the ontologies, and providing points of reference with which to compare the genes and mutants across these species.The broader impact of this project is that it provides a framework of plant development to allow researchers to make meaningful cross-database queries across the various species-specific resources in order to discover patterns of similarities and dissimilarities involved in plant development. For example, researchers will be able to obtain a definitive list of genes whose action affects plant stem development. The interaction between research communities will be facilitated by a "Rosetta stone" that bridges their historical differences in terminology. This will allow the fruits of research in one plant species to be more easily used in the study of other species, leading to a greater understanding of plant biology. This in turn will aid in the creation of new varieties of crop plants to meet the food needs of an ever-growing world population, to the development of pharmaceuticals to treat human disease, and the creation of new classes of herbicides, pesticides and biological control measure to counter the growing impact of resistant weeds and pests on world-wide agriculture.DeliverablesDeliverables from this project include: (a) an ontology describing plant anatomy; (b) an ontology describing plant developmental stages; (c) a web site that stores plant ontology associations to strains, mutants and genes from multiple participant databases; (d) a series of users group meetings that provide education and outreach opportunities.