Summary

Integration of information is quintessential to make use of the wealth of bioinformatics resources. One aspect of integration is to make databases interoperable through well annotated information. With new databases one strives to store complementary information and such results in collections of heterogeneous information systems. Concepts in these databases need to be connected and ontologies typically provide a common terminology to share information among different resources. Our focus of research is the zebrafish and we have developed several information systems in which ontologies are crucial. Pivot is an ontology describing the developmental anatomy, referred to as the Developmental Anatomy Ontolgoy of Zebrafish (DAOZ). The anatomical and temporal concepts are provided by the Zebrafish Information Network (ZFIN) and proven within the research community. We have constructed a 3D digital atlas of zebrafish development based on histology; the atlas is series of volumetric models; in each instance, every volume element is assigned to an anatomical term. Complementing the atlas we developed an information system with 3D patterns of gene expression in zebrafish development based on marker genes. The spatial and tempora