Tripal within the Legumes Genomics Community

PeanutBase is a new organism database and LegumeInfo is the updated implementation of the Legume Information Systems (LIS). Both were started with the goal of sharing code, data, schemas, and personnel. Additionally, the two sites are supported by groups at different institutions so a platform that supports shared development was essential. Toward this end, we chose to implement both sites in Chado and Tripal, partly in light of the number of adopters in the broader legume community. Our first challenge was the representation of QTL data, which is not well-supported by existing Chado and Tripal modules. To address this need for us and for the Tripal community, we are developing standard data collection spreadsheets, Chado loaders, and a Tripal extension module for collecting, curating, loading, and presenting QTL data. This work is and will continue to be done in collaboration with other plant databases that handle QTL data such as SoyBase, CottonGen, and CoolSeasonLegumes. Another emphasis of both databases is gene families and phylogenetic trees, so we have also developed Tripal extension modules for the presentation of both.