An anatomy ontology to represent biological knowledge in Dictyostelium discoideum

Background: Dictyostelium discoideum is a model system for studying many important physiological processes including chemotaxis, phagocytosis, and signal transduction. The recent sequencing of the genome has revealed the presence of over 12,500 protein-coding genes. The model organism database dictyBase hosts the genome sequence as well as a large amount of manually curated information. Results: We present here an anatomy ontology for Dictyostelium based upon the life cycle of the organism. Conclusion: Anatomy ontologies are necessary to annotate species-specific events such as phenotypes, and the Dictyostelium anatomy ontology provides an essential tool for curation of the Dictyostelium genome.