Subject: First Announcement - MGED3 Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 19:13:32 -0800 (PST) From: Mike Cherry To: plantarrays@genome.Stanford.EDU ** FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT ** The Third International Meeting on Microarray Data Standards, Annotations, Ontologies and Databases March 29-31, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California For information and registration please see: http://www.dnachip.org/mged3/ Working group meetings are scheduled for March 28th. INTRODUCTION The goals of this meeting are to present the results of the standards developed so far and engage the microarray community in the continued development of these standards. The underlying goal is to facilitate the establishment of gene expression data repositories, comparability of gene expression data from different sources and interoperability of different gene expression databases and data analysis software. Since 1999 the group has had two general meetings, held in European Bioinformatics Institute in November 1999 (see Nature, 403, 17 Feb, 699-700) and EMBL/DKFZ in May 2000 where draft recommendations on microarray data representation and annotation were accepted and five working groups were established. The focus of MGED is to provide a collaborative atmosphere where the basic and central issues of data gathering, handling and analysis of high-throughput gene expression technologies can be discussed and (hopefully) solved. Primary interests of MGED are reflected in its working groups, which include: 1) Experiment description and data representation standards 2) Microarray data XML exchange format 3) Ontologies for sample description 4) Normalization, quality control and cross-platform comparison 5) Future user group: queries, query language, data mining Participants in MGED working groups include individuals from a wide variety of academic, governmental, non-profit and commercial entities. Two documents have been prepared since MGED2: MIAME : http://www.mged.org/Annotations-wg/index.html MAML : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mged/ MGED3 will include three tutorial sessions: use of MIAME/MAML standards, Data normalization methods and experimental design. FORMAT The number of participants will be restricted to 350. The meeting will begin by a plenary session that will include reports from the working groups, review of recent developments in microarray repository databases (including GeneX, GEO, ArrayExpress) and other related developments. See the agenda for a detailed program. In anticipation that this meeting will be over-subscribed we have placed two requirements on all registrants. 1) Everyone must submit an abstract, deadline is March 1st. 2) Registration will be limited to no more than three members of one laboratory or company. A total of 50 participants will be chosen to present a poster. REGISTRATION FEE: Academic Industry Early (Feb 1 - Feb 17) 200 500 Late (Feb 18 - Mar 1) 275 675 Registration will open February 1, 2001 and close on March 1, 2001. LOCATION: The meeting will be held at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. ------------------------------------------- Pre-Meetings ------------------------------------------- WORKSHOP ON MICROARRAY DATA ANNOTATIONS: March 28 - 9:30 am - 2:30 pm The Microarray Annotations working group was established at MGED 1 meeting in November 1999 (see www.mged.org). The group has developed recommendations for Minimum Information about a Microarray Experiment - MIAME, the aim of which is to ensure the interpretability of the data, as well as potential verification of the experimental results by third parties (see URL below). The goal of the workshop at MGED 3 will be to adopt the final draft of MIAME recommendations and to discuss the possible future work of the group. For more information follow http://www.mged.org/Annotations-wg/index.html. ------------------------------------------- WORKSHOP ON ONTOLOGIES: March 28 - 3:30 pm - 6:30 pm A common and consistent representation for describing microarray experiments is essential for efficient exchange, interpretation, and (ultimately) comparison of results. Ontologies are being sought and developed to provide this representation of microarray experiments at three levels: sample description (e.g., taxonomy); an experimental study (e.g., relationship of components); relation to other knowledge domains (e.g., sequence annotation, gene function). The workshop will begin with a review of issues raised at prior meetings. Efforts to address the species-specific nature of sample descriptions will be discussed. Proposals to provide an ontology of a microarray study will be considered. http://www.cbil.upenn.edu/Ontology/MGED_ontology.html ------------------------------------------- -- This message is from the PlantArray Mailing list. Problems with the list? E-mail: owner-plantarrays@stanford.edu Subscribing send "subscribe" to plantarrays-request@genome.stanford.edu Unsubscribing send "unsubscribe" to plantarrays-request@genome.stanford.edu Web archive at: http://genome-www.stanford.edu/email/plantarrays.html