The Legume Information System (http://legumeinfo.org) and The Legume Federation (http://legumefederation.org): Comparative Genomics and Genetics through Cooperative Resource Development

The continued increase of genomic and genetic data for multiple species belonging to the diverse legume plant family presents researchers with many opportunities for using intra- and inter-species comparisons to address biological questions pertinent to agriculturally relevant problems. However, providing coherent access to the disparate datasets being generated by independent research groups in a manner that enables these data to serve usefully as community resources remains a challenge. We shall present ongoing work aimed at addressing these issues through an open federation of groups who are focused on different subsets of the legume research community but are united through: the adoption of common data and metadata standards, the use of common protocols and cyber-infrastructure resources for data sharing, and a commitment to shared development efforts. We shall demonstrate how we are approaching problems of integration across this diverse and economically important plant family with user-friendly resources developed to make use of: shared data sets including diverse publically available annotated reference genomes, expression atlases, gene families, and intraspecific hapmap data; open source frameworks such as Intermine, Chado/Tripal, and web-based tools developed using these frameworks for presentation and analysis of gene phylogenies, genome synteny, and gene expression; and cyberinfrastructure resources provided through the Cyverse collaborative. We will feature specific use cases in hopes of providing an incentive for other groups working within the legumes to consider aligning their efforts with ours, as well as to showcase the tools available for adoption by groups working in other clade-based systems.