Re: [base] MO terms (annotations) for experiments

[Nicklas N. <ni...@th...>]

On 2011-10-25 09:22, Pawel Sztromwasser wrote:
> Hi
>
> Working with the MageTab export I have noticed that it would be great to
> have additional properties for experiments that could hold MGED Ontology
> annotations, e.g. Experiment Design, Replicate Type, Quality Control
> Type. Up to now we've been using the Experiment Design and Experiment
> Type fields of experiments to hold this information, but it is a bit
> counterintuitive and does not restrict to available MO terms.
>
> In order to attach a fixed vocabulary term to an experiment it is
> probably easiest to make experiments annotatable and create one
> annotation type with selection of terms for every property. Further, the
> MO annotation types could be present in BASE by default (like the
> default protocol types), together with selections of MO terms. What do
> you think?

I have also noticed that many of the experiment properties are 
annotation-like and that it would be better to simply use annotations 
instead. Unfortunately, it's too late to include this in the BASE 3 
release, so I guess it will have to wait for BASE 3.1. Making the 
experiment annotable is fairly easy. The existing information must stay 
as it is.

Regarding default annotation types, I think it is best to not include 
any in a standard installation. Ontologies tend to change every now and 
then, so it's better to let administrators handle that.

/Nicklas