title: Integrating biological data--the Distributed Annotation System.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The Distributed Annotation System (DAS) is a widely adopted protocol for dynamically integrating a wide range of biological data from geographically diverse sources. DAS continues to expand its applicability and evolve in response to new challenges facing integrative bioinformatics.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we describe the various infrastructure components of DAS and present a new extended version of the DAS specification. Version 1.53E incorporates several recent developments, including its extension to serve new data types and an ontology for protein features.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our extensions to the DAS protocol have facilitated the integration of new data types, and our improvements to the existing DAS infrastructure have addressed recent challenges. The steadily increasing numbers of available data sources demonstrates further adoption of the DAS protocol.
authors.affiliation: European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK. andy.jenkinson@ebi.ac.uk
authors.forename: Andrew M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Jenkinson
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Albrecht
authors.forename: Ewan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Birney
authors.forename: Hagen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Blankenburg
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Down
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Finn
authors.forename: Henning
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hermjakob
authors.forename: Tim J P
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Hubbard
authors.forename: Rafael C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Jimenez
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kähäri
authors.forename: Eugene
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kulesha
authors.forename: José R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Macías
authors.forename: Gabrielle A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Reeves
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Prlić
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D018511:Systems Integration