Title: The Plant Ontology Consortium

Authors: Lincoln Stein, Elizabeth Kellogg, Sue Rhee,  Susan McCouch,  Doreen Ware,  Pankaj Jaiswal,  Peter Stevens, Leonore Reiser,  Leszek Vincent, Mary Polacco, Marty Sachs, Filipe Zapata, Shuly Avraham.

The goals of the Plant Ontology Consortiumare 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 started with Arabidopsis and cereals such as rice and maize, and later extend this ontology to encompass legumes, Solanaceae, and other plant families.  Concurrently, these terms will be applied to the task of describing the genes and mutantsthat 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 will provide a framework of plant developmentto allow researchers to make meaningful cross database queries across the various species specific resources such as Gramene, TAIR, MaizeGDB, PlantGDB, etc. 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 development and implementation of plant ontology will allow the fruits of research in one plant species to be more easily usedin the study of other species, leading to a greater understanding of plant biology. The project is supported by National Science Foundation grant No. 0321666 to the Plant Ontology Consortium.