RDF-based data sharing
                      of bio-resource related information

         Hiroshi Masuya1,2, Terue Takatsuki1, Mikako Saito1, Eiki Takayama1,
         Kazuya Ohshima1, Nozomu Ohshiro1, Kai Lenz2, Nobuhiko Tanaka1,
             Hiroshi Mori3, Shuichi Kawashima4 and Norio Kobayashi2,1
                  1
                  RIKEN BioResource Center, 3-1-1 Kouyadai, Tsukuba, Japan
              2
                Advanced Center for Computing and Communication, RIKEN,
                                 2-1, Hirosawa, Wako, Japan
       3
         Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, Japan
           4
             Database Center for Life Science, 178-4-4 Wakashiba, Kashiwa, Japan
     {hmasuya, takatter, mikakosaito, etakayama, kazuya22, nobtanak}@brc.riken.jp
                          { kai.lenz, norio.kobayashi}@riken.jp
                         hmori@bio.titech.ac.jp, kwsm@dbcls.rois.ac.jp



Abstract

   “Bio-resources”, commonly used biological materials for experimental studies
such as mouse strains, cell lines and microbe culture collections are crucial
fundamentals to provide reproducibility and reliability of data in life science. To
provide advanced infrastructure of life science, wider-dissemination, quality control
and standardization of bio-resources are required. In this sense, data of bio-resources
and related information also should be broadly “shared” in life science community.
Standardized methodology of data handling across databases and software
applications, which helps to maximize utility and re-use of released data is also
important issues.
   Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Semantic Web technologies provide
suitable infrastructure for wide dissemination and re-use of bio-resource related
information. Therefore, we have worked out construction of RDF data of bio-
resources (mouse strains, rat strains, medaka strains, cell lines and microbe strains)
collected from multiple resource centers in Japan. We adopted community-developed
data schemas for cell lines (Cell Line Ontology: CLO) and microbes (Microbial
Culture Collection Vocabulary (MCCV). For descriptions of phenotypic properties of
bio-resources, we designed common schema links to ontologies of phenotype (e.g.
Mammalian Phenotype Ontology and Zebrafish Phenotype Ontology), body parts (e.g.
Adult Mouse Anatomy, and Zebrafish Anatomy) and Phenotypic Quality (PATO).
Constructed RDF data are available from RIKEN Meta Database
(http://metadb.riken.jp), which provides web-based interfaces of relational-database
like data viewer with table and card interfaces, bulk data download function and
SPARQL endpoint. Each database projects in RIKEN Meta Database is accessible
from the portal site J-phenome (http://jphenome.info).
   RDF-version datasets of bio-resources help coordination across multiple databases.
Common data schema of bio-resource related datasets easily enables cross-dataset
search of resources showing related phenotypes classified as a specific category. In
addition, we are planning to collaborate with MicrobeDB.jp, which is an integrated
database of microbial metagenomes, for sharing the latest RDF data of microbial
strains in RIKEN BioResource Center. We expect that RDF-based data coordination
will contribute to global sharing and improvement of utilities of bio-resources.




 Screenshots of the metadata of BRC mouse resources and phenotypes
（http://metadb.riken.jp/metadb/db/rikenbrc_mouse）