THE PLANT ONTOLOGY CONSORTIUM

¹ Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA

² Department of Plant Breeding, Bradfield Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

³ Department of Biology, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121 U.S.A.

⁴ The Arabidopsis Information Resource, 260 Panama St., Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

⁵ Missouri Botanical Garden, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63121 U.S.A.

⁶ University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, 65211-7020, USA

⁷ Maize Genetics Cooperation - Stock Center, Department of Crop Sciences - University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801-4798, USA

The goals of the Plant Ontology (PO) Consortium are to develop a common set of controlled vocabulary (ontology) terms to describe anatomical and developmental stages in both experimentally and agronomically important plants. Our first year goal is to create a unified vocabulary for the Arabidopsis, a dicot and the rice and maize monocots. In later years, we will extend this controlled vocabulary to encompass legumes, Solanaceae and other plant families. Participating databases will use these terms to annotate data objects such as gene expression and mutant phenotypes, simultaneously refining the vocabulary (ontology), 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 will provide a framework for comparative plant development that will allow researchers to make meaningful cross-species queries across databases such as Gramene, TAIR, MaizeGDB and PlantGDB, etc. in order to discover differences in gene function and patterns of similarities and dissimilarities in plant development. For example the development and implementation of the ontogeny of leaf development under a consistent and unified definition of the term “leaf development” and its children, will allow the user to obtain a list of known genes whose action affects leaf development. The PO will allow the fruits of research in one plant species to be more easily used in the study of other species, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of plant biology. The project is supported by National Science Foundation grant No. 0321666 to the Plant Ontology Consortium.