title: MIAME/Plant - adding value to plant microarrray experiments.
abstract: Appropriate biological interpretation of microarray data calls for relevant experimental annotation. The widely accepted MIAME guidelines provide a generic, organism-independant standard for minimal information about microarray experiments. In its overall structure, MIAME is very general and specifications cover mostly technical aspects, while relevant organism-specific information useful to understand the underlying experiments is largely missing. If plant biologists want to use results from published microarray experiments, they need detailed information about biological aspects, such as growth conditions, harvesting time or harvested organ(s). Here, we propose MIAME/Plant, a standard describing which biological details to be captured for describing microarray experiments involving plants. We expect that a more detailed and more systematic annotation of microarray experiments will greatly increase the use of transcriptome data sets for the scientific community. The power and value of systematic annotation of microarray data is convincingly demonstrated by data warehouses such as Genevestigator(R) or NASCArrays, and better experimental annotation will make these applications even more powerful.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - ETH Zurich, ETH Center, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland. phz@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zimmermann
authors.forename: Beatrice
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schildknecht
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Craigon
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garcia-Hernandez
authors.forename: Wilhelm
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gruissem
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: May
authors.forename: Gaurab
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mukherjee
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Parkinson
authors.forename: Seung
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rhee
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hennig