Merry Buckley, Systems Microbiology: Beyond Microbial Genomics, American Society for Microbiology, 2004. Excerpt: 'Enormous quantities of biological data have been accumulated over the years, including genome sequences, annotations, biochemical information, microarray profiles, and other types of information. These data could serve as an invaluable resource for developing a systems understanding of microbes, however, many important data sets are unavailable to public databases and others are not amenable to storage or comparison in a database format (video images etc.). Ideally, these data sets should be stored in searchable, cross-referenced databases that allow researchers ready access to information pertaining to their individual research efforts. For example, with new microarray data in hand, a researcher could access a relevant database to discover the location and context of a gene of interest, its place on a metabolic map of that organism, its relationship with or within regulatory networks, and related genes or pathways in other organisms. In order to make the best use of archival data and to move forward in the field, data of use in systems microbiology must be publicly accessible and encoded in a format that can easily be cross referenced.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/08/2005 01:19:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
