LungMAP

LungMAP provides the BREATH database and curated anatomic and cellular ontologies to characterize the molecular and cellular anatomy of developing mouse and human lungs for studies of alveolar formation and maturation.

Key Features:

• Integrated Database (BREATH): BREATH stores molecular, cellular, and imaging datasets for characterizing developing mouse and human lungs.
• Anatomic and Cellular Ontologies: Ontologies are structured as partonomic hierarchies along the proximal-distal axis with respiratory, vascular, neural, and immunologic components and include approximately 300 fetal and postnatal terms per species.
• Comparative Ontology Development: Ontologies were developed by comparing mouse and human terms to identify common, analogous, and unique concepts, eliminating redundancy and cross-referencing existing biological and biomedical resources and established databases.
• Annotation and Data Integration: The ontologies support image annotation and provide a framework for standardized data annotation, retrieval, and integration across diverse datasets within BREATH.

Scientific Applications:

• Study of alveolar formation: Enable analysis of molecular and cellular dynamics during alveolar formation and maturation in mouse and human lungs.
• Cross-species comparison of lung structure: Facilitate identification of species-specific variations in lung architecture, connective tissue distribution, and cellular composition between mouse and human.
• Standardized data annotation and retrieval: Support standardized annotation and retrieval of developmental lung datasets to integrate imaging, molecular, and cellular data.

Methodology:

Ontology development used multiple rounds of comparison against existing biological and biomedical ontologies and incorporation of additional terms from the scientific literature.