The Adult Mouse Anatomical Dictionary: a tool for annotating and integrating data

Terry F Hayamizu¹ , Mary Mangan¹^,2 , John P Corradi¹^,3 , James A Kadin¹ and Martin Ringwald¹

¹The Jackson Laboratory, 600 Main Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, USA

²Current address: OpenHelix, 65 Main Street, Somerville, MA 02145, USA

³Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, 5 Research Parkway, Wallingford, CT 06492, USA

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2005, 6:R29doi:10.1186/gb-2005-6-3-r29


Published:	15 February 2005

Subject areas: Bioinformatics, Genome studies, Model organisms, Medicine

Abstract

We have developed an ontology to provide standardized nomenclature for anatomical terms in the postnatal mouse. The Adult Mouse Anatomical Dictionary is structured as a directed acyclic graph, and is organized hierarchically both spatially and functionally. The ontology will be used to annotate and integrate different types of data pertinent to anatomy, such as gene expression patterns and phenotype information, which will contribute to an integrated description of biological phenomena in the mouse.