Digital Approaches for the Synthesis of Poorly Accessible Biodiversity Information
DiASPora aims to improve the integration, accessibility and manageability of information on bacterial biodiversity. To this end, currently available information is gathered and processed from a multitude of sources, including more than 150 scientific journals.
The project uses the established de.NBI database BacDive to link data in machine-readable form, making it easily accessible. In parallel, new bioinformatics tools are being developed that enable multidimensional analyses of these widely divergent molecular, phenotypical and ecologic data to make bacterial properties predictable.
Researchers from a multitude of disciplines will use their different methods to work together within the framework of the project. These experts provide competences in microbiology, informatics, semantic knowledge management, data sciences, software development, text mining and bio-informatics, linking various complementary approaches: manual curation, text mining, inferences by bio-informatic methods and machine learning.
Vocabularies and ontologies let the project convert microbiologic data of the BacDive database into a machine-readable format with the help of the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The transformed data are consequently used to establish a Knowledge Graph, which enables innovative search possibilities to discover new scientific findings and data connections that were hidden until now.
ZB MED’s role in the project
Mobilization of microbioal knowledge via text mining of scientific literature
Duration
1 May 2020 – 30 April 2023
Funding bodies
Leibniz Collaborative Excellence funding programme
Partners
- Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, Braunschweig
- TIB - Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Hanover
