An international bioinformatics infrastructure to underpin the Arabidopsis community.

The future bioinformatics needs of the Arabidopsis community as well as those of other scientific communities that depend on Arabidopsis resources were discussed at a pair of recent meetings held by the Multinational Arabidopsis Steering Committee and the North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee. There are extensive tools and resources for information storage, curation, and retrieval of Arabidopsis data that have been developed over recent years primarily through the activities of The Arabidopsis Information Resource, the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre, and the Arabidopsis Biological Resource Center, among others. However, the rapid expansion in many data types, the international basis of the Arabidopsis community, and changing priorities of the funding agencies all suggest the need for changes in the way informatics infrastructure is developed and maintained. We propose that there is a need for a single core resource that is integrated into a larger international consortium of investigators. We envision this to consist of a distributed system of data, tools, and resources, accessed via a single information portal and funded by a variety of sources, under shared international management of an International Arabidopsis Informatics Consortium (IAIC). This article outlines the proposal for the development, management, operations, and continued funding for the IAIC.