Finding Our Way through Phenotypes.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-6-2015

JAX Source

PLoS Biol 2015 Jan 6; 13(1):e1002033.

Volume

13

Issue

1

First Page

1002033

Last Page

1002033

ISSN

1545-7885

PMID

25562316

Grant

DEB0956049

Abstract

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. PLoS Biol 2015 Jan 6; 13(1):e1002033.

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