Hi Susie et al.,
Since SenseLab’s Semantic Web development has been a part of the HCLS
activities, I would like to suggest its new development as part of the
future HCLS activities. One suggestion is the extension of “Entrez
Neuron” to become a Semantic Web portal for mashing up neuroscientific
data provided by different sources. I added a description of this
project to the wiki page, but I also appended the project description below.
Cheers,
-Kei
*****************
Project title: Semantic Web Portal for Neuroscientific Data Mashup
Description:
As the need for neuroscience data integration is growing and the number
of neuroscientific datasets available in RDF/OWL format is increasing,
we are presently at the neuroinformatics frontier of exploring the full
potential of Semantic Web technologies in enabling integrative
neuroscience research (including translational research) that requires
integration of diverse types of neuroscientific data provided by
different sources in heterogeneous formats. As a pilot project, we have
prototyped a user-friendly Web application called “Entrez Neuron” that
allows the user to perform keyword searches for neuron-related
information across multiple data sources (OWL ontologies) including
SenseLab (NeuronDB and ModelDB) ontologies and CCDB (Cell Centered
Database) ontologies. Our future plan is to expand this pilot
application to become a Semantic Web Portal that allows semantic mashup
of diverse types of data in neuroscientifically meaningful ways. To
achieve this, we propose to include additional data/ontology sources and
create different facets that represent user-centric aspects (or views)
of ontologies. For example, “Entrez Neuron” currently features a “brain
region/neuron” facet for organizing query results (about neurons) based
on anatomical structure. Such a hierarchical structure is intuitive to
neuroscientists, while benefiting from the machine use of ontologies in
terms of querying, organizing, and integrating data. Additional facets
that we are implementing/considering include (but not limited to) drug,
disease, pathway, phenotype, gene functions, etc.
Project members: Kei Cheung, Matthias Samwald, Ernest Lim, Luis Marenco
Susie M Stephens wrote:
I've created a Wiki page where people can propose projects for BioRDF to
work on until the end of April [1]. It'd be great if you could post any
ideas that you may have.
Cheers,
Susie
[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/HCLSIG_BioRDF_Subgroup/Brainstorming
