Return to 2012 Open Space/Unconference discussions

Disscussion

A question was raised at the meeting about the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) effort. Let me take this space to briefly describe the effort and to provide a few links. In early discussions at our advisory committee meetings and other stakeholder meetings it was clear that the amount of data, models and research results obtained by DOE investigators in the genomic sciences was significant and yet the ability to infer future predictions and knowledge from the collection of this research data was equally limited. A key challenge for the DOE systems biology community is to make better use of the large quantities of data and information being produced by energy related genomics research. If these data were effectively integrated and analyzed by high-end computational methods, the resulting insights will have an impact on DOE mission-relevant science. Therefore, the DOE systems biology community was brought together in four separate workshops to address research opportunities and information gaps focused in plant, microbial and genomics research. A fourth workshop that included computational and computer science stakeholders was convened with a subset of the larger participant groups to priorities the outlined research objectives gathered from the initial workshops and to create an implementation plan for the Knowledgebase (http://genomicscience.energy.gov/compbio/kbase_plan/index.shtml).

Now completing the first year of the project, the Knowledgebase has developed the necessary infrastructure and initial scientific goals, with the end goal of providing a collaborative effort to accelerate our understanding of microbes, microbial communities and plants. The framework is a community-driven, extensible and scalable open-source software and application system. KBase offers free and open access to data, models, and simulations and will enable scientists and researchers opportunities to build and share their research findings, data and knowledge. More information and the initial prototype (in November, 2012) can be found from this webpage: http://www.kbase.us

Posted by Susan Gregurick, DOE