Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI, http://www.informatics.jax.org) web resources provide free access to detailed information on the biology of the laboratory mouse. Searches of MGI are aided by the use of standardized nomenclatures for genes, alleles, and strains and by defined, hierarchical vocabularies: the Mammalian Phenotype (MP) Ontology, the Gene Ontologies (GO) and Mouse Developmental Anatomy. Data include over 291,000 MP annotations, 310,000 GO annotations and 1.5 million expression assay results.
MGI provides several tools for generating tab-delimited files of search results and for querying with lists of genes, alleles and IDs. Dozens of weekly database reports are available for download as well as full database dumps for MySQL and PostgreSQL. Data integration allows complex queries across multiple data sets and most web searches provide tab-delimited data export options. An easy to use Batch Query supports a variety of queries using IDs and symbols. An even more powerful tool, MouseMine, offers iterative querying, built-in enrichment analysis, and API support. A Batch Search for gene expression data returns a tissue-by-gene matrix view that facilitates a comparison of expression patterns between genes.
Live demonstrations of MGI resources are also available at the MGI Booth exhibit: 433. MGI’s dedicated User Support group is available at mgi-help@jax.org.
This work is supported by NIH grants HG000330 and HD062499.