I-DCC · “The International Data Coordination Centre”

The I-DCC coordination and support project responds to the topic defined by HEALTH-2007-2.1.2-6 “International activities in large-scale data gathering and systems biology”. I-DCC integrates European skills, efforts, resources, and infrastructure in an international collaborative programme to establish a European Data Coordination Centre for mouse genetic resources. Large-scale mouse mutagenesis programs have been established worldwide with the aim of creating loss-of-function mutations in all genes in the mouse. At the moment, these resources largely consist of frozen archives of genetically modified mouse embryonic stem cells that can be conveniently disseminated within the international mouse genetics community for the purpose of generating knockout mice. Most notably, the EUCOMM, KOMP and NorCOMM projects (based in Europe, the USA and Canada, respectively) have been recently established and are expected to achieve near-complete coverage of all mouse genes using high-throughput gene trapping and gene targeting technology. Currently, there is no single point of entry for information on the international ES cell resources. The overall goal of theI-DCC is to lead an effort to establish common data formats and a single portal for access to information on all mutant ES cell resources. This project is built on exceptionally strong international expertise in mouse genome informatics and includes key scientists and bioinformaticians actively involved in the three ongoing large-scale mouse knock out projects (EUCOMM, KOMP and NorCOMM). The I-DCC will 1) coordinate with existing international bioinformatics resources to catalogue and assign unique identifiers to all mouse genes, 2) collaborate with all major ES cell production sites to define standard data formats for the annotation and display of mutant alleles and 3) provide ES cell repositories with standardized data on all ES cell lines and 4) establish a common web portal to facilitate the distribution and use