Skip to main content
Comparative and Functional Genomics logoLink to Comparative and Functional Genomics
. 2005 Oct-Dec;6(7-8):388–397. doi: 10.1002/cfg.496

Plant Ontology (PO): a Controlled Vocabulary of Plant Structures and Growth Stages

Pankaj Jaiswal 1,, Shulamit Avraham 2, Katica Ilic 3, Elizabeth A Kellogg 4, Susan McCouch 1, Anuradha Pujar 1, Leonore Reiser 3, Seung Y Rhee 3, Martin M Sachs 5,6, Mary Schaeffer 6,7, Lincoln Stein 2, Peter Stevens 4,8, Leszek Vincent 7, Doreen Ware 2,6, Felipe Zapata 4,8
PMCID: PMC2447502  PMID: 18629207

Abstract

The Plant Ontology Consortium (POC) (www.plantontology.org) is a collaborative effort among several plant databases and experts in plant systematics, botany and genomics. A primary goal of the POC is to develop simple yet robust and extensible controlled vocabularies that accurately reflect the biology of plant structures and developmental stages. These provide a network of vocabularies linked by relationships (ontology) to facilitate queries that cut across datasets within a database or between multiple databases. The current version of the ontology integrates diverse vocabularies used to describe Arabidopsis, maize and rice (Oryza sp.) anatomy, morphology and growth stages. Using the ontology browser, over 3500 gene annotations from three species-specific databases, The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) for Arabidopsis, Gramene for rice and MaizeGDB for maize, can now be queried and retrieved.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (376.5 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Arabidopsis Genome Initiative Analysis of the genome sequence of the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature. 2000 Dec 14;408(6814):796–815. doi: 10.1038/35048692. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Bard Jonathan B. L., Rhee Seung Y. Ontologies in biology: design, applications and future challenges. Nat Rev Genet. 2004 Mar;5(3):213–222. doi: 10.1038/nrg1295. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Berardini Tanya Z., Mundodi Suparna, Reiser Leonore, Huala Eva, Garcia-Hernandez Margarita, Zhang Peifen, Mueller Lukas A., Yoon Jungwoon, Doyle Aisling, Lander Gabriel. Functional annotation of the Arabidopsis genome using controlled vocabularies. Plant Physiol. 2004 Jun 1;135(2):745–755. doi: 10.1104/pp.104.040071. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Böhme Karen, Li Yong, Charlot Florence, Grierson Claire, Marrocco Katia, Okada Kyotaka, Laloue Michel, Nogué Fabien. The Arabidopsis COW1 gene encodes a phosphatidylinositol transfer protein essential for root hair tip growth. Plant J. 2004 Dec;40(5):686–698. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2004.02245.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Clark Jennifer I., Brooksbank Cath, Lomax Jane. It's all GO for plant scientists. Plant Physiol. 2005 Jul;138(3):1268–1279. doi: 10.1104/pp.104.058529. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. International Rice Genome Sequencing Project The map-based sequence of the rice genome. Nature. 2005 Aug 11;436(7052):793–800. doi: 10.1038/nature03895. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Kang Byung-Ho, Rancour David M., Bednarek Sebastian Y. The dynamin-like protein ADL1C is essential for plasma membrane maintenance during pollen maturation. Plant J. 2003 Jul;35(1):1–15. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-313x.2003.01775.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Lawrence Carolyn J., Dong Qunfeng, Polacco Mary L., Seigfried Trent E., Brendel Volker. MaizeGDB, the community database for maize genetics and genomics. Nucleic Acids Res. 2004 Jan 1;32(DATABASE):D393–D397. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkh011. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Mungall Christopher J. Obol: integrating language and meaning in bio-ontologies. Comp Funct Genomics. 2004;5(6-7):509–520. doi: 10.1002/cfg.435. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Plant Ontology Consortium The Plant Ontology Consortium and plant ontologies. Comp Funct Genomics. 2002;3(2):137–142. doi: 10.1002/cfg.154. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Rhee Seung Yon, Beavis William, Berardini Tanya Z., Chen Guanghong, Dixon David, Doyle Aisling, Garcia-Hernandez Margarita, Huala Eva, Lander Gabriel, Montoya Mary. The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR): a model organism database providing a centralized, curated gateway to Arabidopsis biology, research materials and community. Nucleic Acids Res. 2003 Jan 1;31(1):224–228. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkg076. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Vincent P. Leszek D., Coe Edward H., Polacco Mary L. Zea mays ontology--a database of international terms. Trends Plant Sci. 2003 Nov;8(11):517–520. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2003.09.014. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Ware Doreen H., Jaiswal Pankaj, Ni Junjian, Yap Immanuel V., Pan Xioakang, Clark Ken Y., Teytelman Leonid, Schmidt Steven C., Zhao Wei, Chang Kuan. Gramene, a tool for grass genomics. Plant Physiol. 2002 Dec;130(4):1606–1613. doi: 10.1104/pp.015248. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Yamazaki Yukiko, Jaiswal Pankaj. Biological ontologies in rice databases. An introduction to the activities in Gramene and Oryzabase. Plant Cell Physiol. 2005 Jan 19;46(1):63–68. doi: 10.1093/pcp/pci505. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Comparative and Functional Genomics are provided here courtesy of Wiley

RESOURCES