Enhancing the JaxMice Database Resource

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): ENHANCING THE JAXMICE DATABASE RESOURCE Many factors have converged to lead to a rapid increase in the use of mouse models in biomedical research, and in the rate that new mouse strains are being generated. These include: the completion of the mouse genome sequence; tools to genetically modify the mouse genome; large-scale mutagenesis projects; the similarity of mouse and human genomes and physiology; and the utility of the mouse as a model of human disease. In the next five years, thousands of ES cells and mouse lines will be made by the North American and European Gene Trap Consortia and the NIH Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP). The Jackson Laboratory (TJL), as the most prominent Repository of mouse models, currently distributes over 2,900 strains to the scientific community and is gearing up to be able to accommodate the anticipated increase in the number of mouse lines that will need to be maintained. Critical to this process is the means to develop and maintain the information that biomedical researchers need to select and use the appropriate model. Currently, this information is stored in the JaxMice database in free text phenotype descriptions. This project proposes to assign phenotype terms from the Mammalian Phenotype Ontology developed by the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) project at TJL and disease terms from the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI) Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database to mice in TJL's Repository. Therefore, the JaxMice web site will display essential information from both MGI and NCBI to create tailored views of information on Repository mice. This project will have two crucial benefits: users will be able to search more effectively to find strains important for their research, and the curation process will be much more efficient, enabling the curation staff to provide current information for more mouse models. This will allow curation at the scale that will be required to keep up with the increasing pace of production of mouse models of human disease. Relevance to Public Health: A mouse in any repository is of no value unless the members of the scientific community can identify it as being relevant to their work; this project will expedite this process by assigning phenotype and disease terms from controlled vocabularies to the mice in TJL's Repository. This effort will enable TJL to better serve the research community in the selection and use of mouse models for biomedical research.