Meeting Abstract

P1.75  Wednesday, Jan. 4  lizardbase: An integrative scientific database and educational resource for discovery and learning KULATHINAL, Rob J.*; LIANG, Yu; HSIEH, S. Tonia; Temple University; Temple University; Temple University robkulathinal@temple.edu

lizardbase is a publicly accessible knowledgebase hosted by the Kulathinal and Hsieh labs at Temple University. By providing datasets that range from genetics and genomics to organismal and ecological studies, lizardbase offers biologists a centralized and consolidated informatics resource. With the recent publication of the green anole, Anolis carolinensis, genome project, lizards are rapidly becoming a model system for interdisciplinary biological research. Our two principal goals are: 1) to provide a resource facilitating scientific discovery and collaboration, and 2) to increase student and citizen involvement in the sciences. We highlight novel features that we have developed during the last year including new K-12 genomics and GIS-based curricula, a smartphone application that automatically uploads student data (including photos) onto lizardbase via a curated platform, new gene nomenclature tables, multi-species alignments, new next-gen sequence data from other species of anoles, and a mechanism to upload valuable datasets from published and unpublished studies via an easy-to-use curation mechanism. We also demonstrate how this genomics and data-mapping portal can address tractable hypotheses from such diverse fields as functional morphology, invasion biology, and evolutionary genetics.