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PhyloTastic - names-based phyloinformatic data integration
Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: America del Nord (Theatre I)
Date: 2013-10-31 09:25 AM – 09:35 AM
Last modified: 2013-10-05
Abstract
PhyloTastic is the name and adjective for a collection of web service interfaces that jointly enable extraction of subtrees from known phylogenetic “megatrees”; grafting of missing taxa onto these subtrees; scaling of branch lengths to evolutionary time; and final delivery of the results in a variety of data formats, some of which have the semantic richness to record the provenance of the input data and analysis steps. The goal is to establish a “design pattern” that, when implemented, yields a one-stop-shop for the delivery of credible, re-usable phylogenies that can be applied to a variety of research questions. To achieve this, data from disparate sources must be integrated, most notably on the basis of taxonomic names. Such names-based data integration is fraught with challenges, as taxonomic names may be synonyms, homonyms, misspellings, suffixed in various ways, and so on. To address this issue, PhyloTastic includes a “meta” web service for taxonomic name reconciliation. The design is modular such that different back-end taxonomies can be queried at the same time, with returned “hits” ranked by confidence and made identifiable by globally unique URIs on which further integration can be anchored. I will present the interface of this service, with examples of successful interaction.