02376nas a2200409   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002260001300043653002300056653001700079653001800096653001300114653001100127653002800138653002700166100002100193700001800214700001600232700001900248700002200267700001800289700001900307700001900326700001500345700001700360700001900377700001800396700001800414700001900432700001800451700001600469245013800485300001200623490000700635520131000642022001401952       2008                            d  c2008 Jan10aDatabases, Genetic10aGenes, Plant10aGenome, Plant10aInternet10aPlants10aUser-Computer Interface10aVocabulary, Controlled1 aShulamit Avraham1 aChih-Wei Tung1 aKatica Ilic1 aPankaj Jaiswal1 aElizabeth Kellogg1 aSusan McCouch1 aAnuradha Pujar1 aLeonore Reiser1 aSeung Rhee1 aMartin Sachs1 aMary Schaeffer1 aLincoln Stein1 aPeter Stevens1 aLeszek Vincent1 aFelipe Zapata1 aDoreen Ware00aThe Plant Ontology Database: a community resource for plant structure and developmental stages controlled vocabulary and annotations.  aD449-540 v363 aThe Plant Ontology Consortium (POC, http://www.plantontology.org) is a collaborative effort among model plant genome databases and plant researchers that aims to create, maintain and facilitate the use of a controlled vocabulary (ontology) for plants. The ontology allows users to ascribe attributes of plant structure (anatomy and morphology) and developmental stages to data types, such as genes and phenotypes, to provide a semantic framework to make meaningful cross-species and database comparisons. The POC builds upon groundbreaking work by the Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) by adopting and extending the GOC's principles, existing software and database structure. Over the past year, POC has added hundreds of ontology terms to associate with thousands of genes and gene products from Arabidopsis, rice and maize, which are available through a newly updated web-based browser (http://www.plantontology.org/amigo/go.cgi) for viewing, searching and querying. The Consortium has also implemented new functionalities to facilitate the application of PO in genomic research and updated the website to keep the contents current. In this report, we present a brief description of resources available from the website, changes to the interfaces, data updates, community activities and future enhancement.  a1362-4962