Model Organism Databases (MODs) and the Gene Ontology Consortium play a crucial “behind-the-scenes” role in the work of model organism geneticists and many other biomedical researchers. This guest post by the newly-formed Alliance of Genome Resources announces the group’s intention to integrate the efforts of the MODs and other genome resources. You can learn more about these plans and the work of the MODs at GSA’s The Allied Genetics Conference in July. Stay tuned for more details!

An Alliance of Genome Resources has been formed to provide better support for the biological sciences via an integration of shared data, standardization of data models and interfaces, and unified outreach to researchers, educators and the public. The initial members of the Alliance are the Gene Ontology Consortium and six model organism databases: Saccharomyces Genome Database, WormBase, FlyBase, Zebrafish Model Organism Database, Mouse Genome Database and Rat Genome Database. The integration of these projects will not decrease the types of data, tools and community support that are currently provided by these resources but rather will provide the best displays and tools currently in use and allow us to efficiently develop new tools in a collaborative manner. As we move toward deeper integration of our content and software we will provide easy-to-use cross-organism queries of the extensive data available in the component resources. Also, future integration of other resources will benefit all biologists.

The Alliance of Genome Resources will continue the tradition of these community resources by enabling researchers to leverage the published results and datasets from well-studied organisms for their daily research. By integrating high-quality expertly curated information, the Alliance will continue to provide researchers access to data, information and knowledge found in published and publicly available sources that would require many lifetimes to assemble.

The modular architecture of modern websites will allow the Alliance to maintain the uniqueness of each research community – and each user – through customization. We will present a common view of information whenever possible. A common website will have distinct entry points for the different communities and tools that will maintain the community-building features of our current resources. By joining the Alliance of Genome Resources, the member organizations pledge mutual support, as well as support of research communities having interests in common with those of the Alliance, with the goal of delivering facile information retrieval for all biologists. We will definitely need your support in obtaining sufficient funding for these efforts.

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Guest posts are contributed by members of our community. The views expressed in guest posts are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily endorsed by the Genetics Society of America. If you'd like to write a guest post, e-mail communications@genetics-gsa.org.

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