title: Laboratory Animal Management Assistant (LAMA): a LIMS for active research colonies.
abstract: Laboratory Animal Management Assistant (LAMA) is an internet-based system for tracking large laboratory mouse colonies. It has a user-friendly interface with powerful search capabilities that ease day-to-day tasks such as tracking breeding cages and weaning litters. LAMA was originally developed to manage hundreds of new mouse strains generated by a large functional genomics program, the Pleiades Promoter Project ( http://www.pleiades.org ). The software system has proven to be highly flexible, suitable for diverse management approaches to mouse colonies. It allows custom tagging and grouping of animals, simplifying project-specific handling and access to data. Finally, LAMA was developed in close collaboration with mouse technicians to ease the transition from paper- or Excel-based management systems to computerized tracking, allowing data export in a popular spreadsheet format and automatic printing of cage cards. LAMA is an open-access software tool, freely available to the research community at http://launchpad.net/mousedb .
authors.affiliation: Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics at the Child & Family Research Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Milisavljevic
authors.forename: Taryn
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hearty
authors.forename: Tony Y T
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Elodie
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Portales-Casamar
authors.forename: Elizabeth M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.forename: Wyeth W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Wasserman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003628:Database Management Systems; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods; D007756:Laboratory Animal Science / Q000379:methods; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D012106:Research; D012984:Software
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