Mouse genome informatics in a new age of biological inquiry

Data integration is key to knowledge discovery in the age of genomics and represents a major, long-standing challenge for the genome informatics community. Integration of data across heterogeneous genome databases requires the identification of common data entities and mechanisms to ensure referential integrity and persistence of these common entities even as our understanding of their biological properties changes. The Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) database group employs multiple strategies for achieving data integration and maintaining inter-connectedness with other databases, including: (1) the use of permanent, unique accession IDs for identifying core data entities, (2) the application of nomenclature standards for naming genes and strains of mice, and (3) the development and implementation of controlled vocabularies and ontologies to ensure semantic consistency of biological concepts within and across model organism databases.