Development of the Golm Metabolome Database as a central plant metabolomics information resource.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dirk Walther
• Co-Applicant: Dr. Joachim Kopka
• Subject Area: Plant Physiology
• Term: from 2011 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 187983435

Metabolomics has emerged as a central technology to study cellular processes. In recent years, standardized methodological and computational approaches have been developed rendering metabolomics datasets obtained for different samples and by different research groups comparable and creating new opportunities for their integrative analysis. This potential is currently not utilized in the metabolomics field and important data are typically dispersed as supplementary files. Adequate centralized information infrastructure resources are still largely missing. We plan to establish the information infrastructure that allows researchers to deposit, query as well as analyze metabolomic profile data. We will build upon the already developed Golm Metabolome Database (GMD) that is focused on plant metabolomic data. We propose to further develop the GMD to integrate metabolite profile datasets and to create the infrastructure specifically tailored towards their web-based presentation, integration and analysis. Furthermore, we plan to integrate and upload comprehensive plant metabolite profiling datasets to serve as reference sets (Plant Metabolite Atlas (PMA)) for other researchers. Thus, we intend to establish a central and broadly available plant-centric metabolomics profile data resource and analysis platform.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)