[Farmanimals] Avian Model Organism Database Survey

[Fiona McCarthy]

Dear Colleagues:

For the past eighteen months an international group has been working to
develop "BirdBase", an Aves-specific Model Organism Database (MOD) that
can be used as a fundamental resource for all avian research communities. 

In other species, community supported MODs serve as a nucleation point for
improving genomic annotations, providing standardized nomenclature,
distributing genomic information to other public databases, building
community resources for research and advocating for improved
representation in public databases and genome browsers. MODs also provide
credibility for researchers by providing a dedicated and centralized
community resource enabling genome-based research.

Chicken is currently the only NIH recognized biomedical species
(http://www.nih.gov/science/models/) that does not have a MOD. Zebra finch
(a model species for investigating vocalization, brain development,
learning, and behavior) also requires a MOD in order to fully leverage the
investment made in sequencing its genome. Other avian genome sequencing
projects are underway and will benefit greatly from an organized MOD for
avian species. 

Since all other MODs are funded by NIH, our plan is to submit an NIH
proposal. However, BirdBase has very significant input from agricultural
researchers and will incorporate information that is relevant to both the
agricultural and biomedical research communities. Our proposed goals are
to improve the chicken and zebra finch genomes by improving the genome
assembly and gene models, provide standardized gene names and gene IDs, 
link different types of information (Gene Ontology, nomenclature,
expression, literature, etc.) to chicken and zebra finch genes, and
present information in ways that are most advantageous to users.  

Community input is an important aspect of obtaining funding for MODs, and
in this regard would be grateful if you could complete the very short web
based survey at http://geisha.arizona.edu/geisha/survey.jsp . This will
require less than a minute of your time. Alternatively, please send your
comments to Parker Antin (pba at email.arizona.edu). We thank those of you
who have already provided input, and welcome additional comments at any
time.   

Thanks for taking the time to provide this essential information.

Parker Antin (GEISHA Project) 
Wes Warren (Washington University Sequencing Center)
Susan Bridges, Shane Burgess & Fiona McCarthy
    The AgBase GO Annotation Team 
Carl Schmidt (University of Delaware)