Event

February 9-12, 2003 Arlington, Virginia

Genomes to Life Contractor-Grantee Workshop I

Workshop Breakout Session - Comparative Genomics: New Approaches & Insights

George Garrity presents “Carolus Linnaeus in the postgenomic era”.

This discussion will focus on a problem that plagues us all to some degree or another - biological nomenclature. Ideally, our formalized system of nomenclature is supposed to improve communication among biologists. In reality, it seems to be a major obstacle, especially when misapplied. Although the problem is evident in the literature, it is most severe in the sequence databases, which now serve as the principal source and repository of data used in comparative biology. Moreover, the sequence databases tend to propagate such errors for a variety of reasons. As biological data proliferates and interconnects, it depends increasingly on software infrastructure, and it becomes increasingly obvious that biological names do not meet the requirements of a good identifier, in strict computing terms. A good identifier should be unique and persistent. As an outgrowth of my current DOE funded project, we have been exploring a practical and workable solution that we believe will help solve the problem in a future-proof fashion.

Download Presentation (645kB PowerPoint)

[permalink] Posted February 9, 2003.