Online Mendelian Inheritance In Animals (OMIA): Enhancement and Curation By and For The Chicken Genomics Community

Online Mendelian Inheritance in Animals (OMIA; http://omia.angis.org.au) is an online catalogue of inherited disorders and other traits in all species of animals except mice and rats.

In recent years, much attention has been focussed on keeping OMIA up to date with molecular characterisations of single-locus disorders/traits across the entire animal kingdom, excluding only mice and rats. Currently, OMIA provides details of 36 single-locus disorders/traits with known causal mutations in chickens, including all five of the original Bateson Mendelian traits, first reported in 1902. With the genomics revolution giving rise to an explosion of knowledge in this area, a single freely-available resource recording all such discoveries in a comparative-genomics context becomes increasingly valuable to the genomics community.  

A major aim of this paper is to identify people who have the time and the inclination to share the curation duties with FN, in the expectation of gradually taking increasing responsibility. Another aim is to raise other possibilities, e.g. OMIA being used as a training resource for postgraduate students, who could be given charge of specific entries during their candidatures. Yet another aim is to examine the feasibility of the resources for enhancement of OMIA being shared across various national and international species groups.

In summary, the overall aim of this paper is to begin to position OMIA as a key resource for the chicken genomics community; a resource to be enhanced and curated by and for chicken-genomics researchers and for end-users of the ever-increasing range of practical results emanating from genomics research.