Sage Commons Opens Initial Genetic Data Sets

January 28, 2010

Keywords: Genetic research, open linked data, life sciences, biology, Open Access Platform

Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit dedicated to making disease-related genetic data available in linked formats to enable large-scale computing and collaboration, announced their first data set open to the public. Their goal is to provide a framework for researchers to construct disease models from human and mouse genetic data. These working models are incredibly complex, so as researchers collaborate they will learn much more in less time than working independently and publishing papers. Merck has generously contributed some of the first data sets, but there will be many more. It’s an exciting project that promises to bring us better disease and therefor better cure models in the near future. Since they are gathering huge data sets and making them into open linked data, they are extending the semantic web of knowledge for life sciences. These open, royalty-free datasets pass the semantic web acid test with flying colors – we hope they inspire others to do the same. Please give them your attention and send your friends to their site. The more people who know that this can work, the better. Learn about the Sage case studies and the Sage Commons and spread the word. Bravo!