Toward fully integration of mouse phenotype information

Tremendous worldwide genetic resources of mice represent a unique resource for the biomedical community, including inbred mice, spontaneous and induced mutants, and a large resource of conditional gene targeting ready ES-cell lines. Recently, international efforts are ongoing toward the completion of functional annotation the mouse whole genome, which furnishing systems view of mammalian biological networks and causes of disease. In this situation, integrations of broad-ranged phenotype data have been presented new challenges for biomedical field. The OBO ontologies and Minimun Information Standards have provided important frameworks of integration and sharing of phenotype information. On the other hand, extension of these tools will be need to utilize advanced integration of phenotype data, namely to represent fully machine-process-able integration of quantitative and qualitative data, advanced classification of phenotype and representation of relationship between mouse phenotype and human disease. We propose that top-level ontology based integration using Mizoguchi’s ontology is one of the most sophisticated answer for this issue.