Peter Rice

EDAM: an ontology of bioinformatics operations, types of data and identifiers, topics and formats

Motivation: Advancing the search, publication and integration of bioinformatics tools and resources demands consistent machine-understandable descriptions. A comprehensive ontology allowing such descriptions is therefore required. Results: EDAM is an ontology of bioinformatics operations (tool or workflow functions), types of data and identifiers, application domains and data formats. EDAM supports semantic annotation of diverse entities such as Web services, databases, programmatic libraries, standalone tools, interactive applications, data schemas, datasets and publications within bioinformatics. EDAM applies to organizing and finding suitable tools and data and to automating their integration into complex applications or workflows. It includes over 2200 defined concepts and has successfully been used for annotations and implementations. Availability: The latest stable version of EDAM is available in OWL format from http://edamontology.org/EDAM.owl and in OBO format from http://edamontology.org/EDAM.obo. It can be viewed online at the NCBO BioPortal and the EBI Ontology Lookup Service. For documentation and license please refer to http://edamontology.org. This article describes version 1.2 available at http://edamontology.org/EDAM_1.2.owl. Contact: jison@ebi.ac.uk

SOAP-based services provided by the European Bioinformatics Institute

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) () based Web Services technology () has gained much attention as an open standard enabling interoperability among applications across heterogeneous architectures and different networks. The European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) is using this technology to provide robust data retrieval and data analysis mechanisms to the scientific community and to enhance utilization of the biological resources it already provides [N. Harte, V. Silventoinen, E. Quevillon, S. Robinson, K. Kallio, X. Fustero, P. Patel, P. Jokinen and R. Lopez (2004) Nucleic Acids Res., 32, 3–9]. These services are available free to all users from .

The EMBRACE web service collection

The EMBRACE (European Model for Bioinformatics Research and Community Education) web service collection is the culmination of a 5-year project that set out to investigate issues involved in developing and deploying web services for use in the life sciences. The project concluded that in order for web services to achieve widespread adoption, standards must be defined for the choice of web service technology, for semantically annotating both service function and the data exchanged, and a mechanism for discovering services must be provided. Building on this, the project developed: EDAM, an ontology for describing life science web services; BioXSD, a schema for exchanging data between services; and a centralized registry (http://www.embraceregistry.net) that collects together around 1000 services developed by the consortium partners. This article presents the current status of the collection and its associated recommendations and standards definitions.

Compilation of DNA sequences of Escherichia coli (update 1993)

We have compiled the DNA sequence data for E. coli available from the GENBANK and EMBL data libraries and over a period of several years independently from the literature. This is the fifth listing replacing and increasing the former listings substantially. However, in order to save space this printed version contains DNA sequence information only, if they are publically available in electronic form. The complete compilation including a full set of genetic map data and the E. coli protein index can be obtained in machine readable form from the EMBL data library (ECD release 15) as a part of the CD-ROM issue of the EMBL sequence database, released and updated every three months. After deletion of all detected overlaps a total of 2,353,635 individual bp is found to be determined till the end of April 1993. This corresponds to a total of 49.87% of the entire E. coli chromosome consisting of about 4,720 kbp. This number may actually be higher by 9161 bp derived from other strains of E. coli.

Tools and data services registry: a community effort to document bioinformatics resources

Life sciences are yielding huge data sets that underpin scientific discoveries fundamental to improvement in human health, agriculture and the environment. In support of these discoveries, a plethora of databases and tools are deployed, in technically complex and diverse implementations, across a spectrum of scientific disciplines. The corpus of documentation of these resources is fragmented across the Web, with much redundancy, and has lacked a common standard of information. The outcome is that scientists must often struggle to find, understand, compare and use the best resources for the task at hand. Here we present a community-driven curation effort, supported by ELIXIR—the European infrastructure for biological information—that aspires to a comprehensive and consistent registry of information about bioinformatics resources. The sustainable upkeep of this Tools and Data Services Registry is assured by a curation effort driven by and tailored to local needs, and shared amongst a network of engaged partners. As of November 2015, the registry includes 1785 resources, with depositions from 126 individual registrations including 52 institutional providers and 74 individuals. With community support, the registry can become a standard for dissemination of information about bioinformatics resources: we welcome everyone to join us in this common endeavour. The registry is freely available at https://bio.tools.

Molecular biological databases--present and future.

The importance of databases as a research tool in molecular biology is growing steadily, and a wide range of databases relevant to genome research is currently available. However, the design of current databases is inadequate for accurate representation and analysis of the results of large-scale genome mapping and sequencing projects. A new generation of databases is required to master the challenges of the future.

EMBRACE: Bioinformatics Data and Analysis Tool Services for e-Science

The EMBRACE project is a network of European partners providing services which integrate the major data resources and analysis software tools using web services and emerging grid technologies. Prototype services are available for the core data resources and the most commonly used tools for sequence analysis. Data access uses the WSDbFetch and BioMart services from the European Bioinformatics Institute. Software tool services use the SoapLab services, also from the European Bioinformatics Institute. The preferred client for these services is Taverna from the myGrid project. Subprojects are collecting and analyzing biological use cases, and maintaining a watch on emerging grid technology in Europe.