GRIN - maize allozyme "traits"

[austinmeier]

While annotating the GRIN germplasm from the Samara scrape, we encountered a GRIN descriptor set that consists entirely of allozyme assays. While attempting to annotate this germplasm for those traits, two possibilities arose:

1. Create a new branch in the TO, under biochemical trait branch.
2. Annotate these datapoints to ECO:0000337 Name: gel electrophoresis evidence Def’n: A type of direct assay evidence where molecules have been sorted according to their size and charge by moving through a gel in the presence of an electric field. Source: ECO:MCC, wikipedia:Gel_electrophoresis Comment: Molecules typically separated include DNA, RNA, or protein. The gel is typically made of agarose, polyacrylamide, or starch.

I like the idea of option 2, because it means less duplication of information, but I am not sure it makes sense to annotate germplasm directly with evidence...

[cooperl09]

Technically it would be be a new "branch" in the TO, but a class. If these are traits breeders are following, I think it makes more sense to annotate to an TO term and use the ECO as the evidence code. Evidence codes support the annotation

[mlschaeffer]

Just FYI, I am not sure, but believe that the allozyme assays are not used any longer in tracking germplasm, but were state of the art in the day. We do have data at MaizeGDB for these, but it is likely not as comprehensive as data stored at GRIN.