RIKEN Meta Database: A Life-science Metadata Database Based on the Semantic Web

We introduce a database platform called ‘RIKEN Meta Database’ that provides information on RIKEN’s various life-science databases to help researchers around the world make full use of RIKEN’s research results. Since RIKEN procures various and large life-sciences datasets through the genomes and phenomes of various species, including datasets for sequence and image data, such resultant research data and databases are heterogeneous and tend to be published in data-domain specific interfaces and formats. To achieve data re-usability, including facilitating data/database discovery and data description as life-science knowledge for further intelligent data analysis, the database platform is implemented to manage metadata of both data and database using Semantic Web technologies with standardised vocabularies and life-science ontologies. As of September 2015, 153 databases, including external public databases and 15 ontologies, are integrated on the platform, and these data can be access via a SPARQL endpoint and a browser-based graphical user interface that shows metadata in table and graph format.