RAT GENOME DATABASE - RGD - DISEASE ORIENTED RESEARCH RESOURCE
Aubrey Hughes1, Jedediah Mathis2, Mary Shimoyama, Milton Datta, Simon Twigger, Charles W.Wang, Nataliya Nenasheva, Dean Pasko, Norberto de la Cruz, Victor Ruotti, Susan Bromberg, Chin-Fu Chen, Rajni Nigam, Gopal Gopinathrao, Angela Zuniga-Myer and Peter Tonellato
1ahughes@mcw.edu, Medical College of Wisconsin; 2jmathis@mcw.edu, Medical College of Wisconsin
The primary goal of model organism databases is to meet the needs of the research communities they serve. The Rat Genome Database (RGD) is unique in that it has developed a program to provide research groups’ access to rat genomic and genetic data, including annotated sequence, related to particular diseases. Among the goals of the RGD Disease Oriented Research Resource is the creation of collaborative relationships between RGD and disease rat research communities to identify, collect, and integrate disease-specific components of data and information into RGD Disease “portals”. These RGD Disease Portals will become the viewing interface to RGD that the disease community will use to quickly focus attention on new and emerging data and results important to their specific research. Among the components of the DORR project are: 1) Development of advisory committees and disease committees to review data being integrated into RGD, 2) Visiting Scientist program which aims to bring disease experts to RGD and train them on using bioinformatics tools while allowing them to train our staff, 3) Use of Electronic Knowledge Retrieval and data mining techniques to identify and acquire disease related rat genetic and genomic data, 4) Identification of Genomic Regions of Interest to target rat sequence for annotation, and 5) Development of Disease Portals to provide ready access to collected and curated data. DORR will help RGD answer the need of the rat community for access to curated data of interest and annotated sequence rgd.mcw.edu.