Names are key to the big new biology

Area of Science:

• Integrative Biology
• Bioinformatics
• Computational Ecology

Background:

• Addressing broad biological questions, particularly in organismal taxonomy, evolution, and ecology, requires robust data infrastructure.
• Current biological information is distributed across the internet, hindering comprehensive analysis and discovery.
• The association of organism names with biological data presents an opportunity for a unified approach.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the emerging Global Names Architecture (GNA) as a names-based infrastructure for biological information.
• To outline how GNA will index and interconnect distributed internet data using organism names.
• To highlight the potential of GNA to advance biology as a 'big science' and revitalize comparative biology.

Main Methods:

• Reviewing the initial components of the Global Names Architecture.
• Leveraging the universal association of organism names for data indexing and interconnection.
• Developing a freely available, participatory, and semantic infrastructure.

Main Results:

• The development of foundational components for the Global Names Architecture.
• Establishment of a framework for a virtual data commons for biological information.
• Demonstration of informatics devices exploiting the 'big new biology' enabled by GNA.

Conclusions:

• The Global Names Architecture is poised to significantly benefit organismal biology research.
• This infrastructure will facilitate the discovery of previously inaccessible biological trends and truths.
• GNA promotes a collaborative, semantic, and expansive approach to biological data management and analysis.