Resources for Data Contributors
Contents
Viewing ontologies
On the web
Many ontologies are available for browsing at the NCBO BioPortal. For example:
Click the "Visualize" button on the ontology's homepage to browse it graphically.
Other ontologies:
The taxonomy ontology is not yet available, but it will be generated from the Catalog of Fishes.
On your desktop
You can download the ontologies as OBO files from the above web sites. You can download and install OBO-Edit to view in a desktop application.
Annotating phenotypes
Phenote
Phenote is used by ZFIN and FlyBase for mutant phenotype annotation. We are developing enhancements to the Phenote EQ Editor for PhenoScape data curation. Some of the PhenoScape-specific enhancements include:
- A specimen list window allowing repeated annotation of the specimens within one publication.
- A phylogeny view allowing application of an EQ annotation to all specimens from a clade at once.
Installation and start up
- You need Java 1.5 or newer to run Phenote. For the Mac this requires Mac OS X 10.4 or newer.
- Launch Phenote using the webstart link. Alternatively, you can try the in-progress builds with the latest features, packaged for Mac OS X or Windows.
- Choose the "phenomap" configuration before beginning.
- So far most curators are using the Excel-compatible tab-delimited format for saving files.
Usage
The following table describes the entry fields in the PhenoScape configuration. Phenote does not force you to fill in them all, but see the table for when to use each field.
| Field | Usage |
|---|---|
| Publication | the publication describing the character state |
| Taxon | Genus & species |
| Catalog Number | museum lot ID |
| Specimen Count | number of specimens from lot examined |
| Preparation | type of specimen preparation (skeleton, cleared & stained, etc.) |
| Entity | term from anatomy ontology (currently using zebrafish) |
| Quality | term from PATO - should be "value" term, unless you are filling in an absolute measurement (e.g. "length") |
| Additional Entity | term from anatomy ontology - only use if the Quality term descends from "relational quality of continuant" |
| Measurement | absolute measurement - useful as value for terms such as "length" |
| Unit | unit of measurement, if Numerical Value is filled in |
| Compare To | a taxon to which this phenotype is in comparison to (optional) |
| Textual Description | textual description of character state in publication |
| Image URI | web link to an image, if available |
Please report any issues you come across by using the Phenote tracker.
Ontology change requests
Here are links to ontology term trackers:
- PATO tracker
- Zebrafish anatomy - does anyone know if there is a term tracker?
