The Bio-Analytic Resource for Plant Biology (BAR) is a platform for plant researchers that contains web-based tools for analyzing data and visualizing functional genomics. In late 2023, it was designated as a Global Core Biodata Resource (GCBR) by the Global Biodata Coalition.
“GCBR resources have high reliability, are authoritative in nature, are open access and have good governance,” says Nick Provart. “There are other bioinformatic resources in the world that have received such designation, but the BAR is the only resource located exclusively in Canada to receive such a designation.”
Provart is a professor of plant cyberinfrastructure and systems biology and chair of the Department of Cell & Systems Biology. The BAR is maintained and operated by members of the Provart Lab. The platform’s bioinformatician is Asher Pasha, and master’s student Vincent Lau provides bioinformatics algorithm analysis and web development.
The BAR covers data from the small flowering plant Arabidopsis, the model legume Medicago truncatula, rice, wheat, barley and 27 other plant species — with data for three others to be released in the near future.
These data include nucleotide and protein sequence data, gene expression data, protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions, protein structures, subcellular localizations and polymorphisms. The data are stored in more than 200 relational databases holding 186 GB of data and are presented to the user via web apps.
These web apps provide data analysis and visualization tools that are hosted on the BAR. Some of the most popular tools are electronic fluorescent pictographs or eFP, browsers, and the gene-expression and protein tools ePlants and ThaleMine, an Arabidopsis-specific instance of InterMine. The BAR receives about four million page views a month by plant researchers worldwide.
The Provart Lab has worked collaboratively with researchers around the world to develop the 157 electronic fluorescent pictograph views for visualizing expression data in the collection of eFP browsers and ePlants. The effort is substantial, so much so that members of the lab are co-authors on 43 of the 60 papers that are considered BAR publications. These 60 BAR papers have collectively been cited 11,011 times since the BAR went online in 2003.
In terms of experiential learning, 79 undergraduate students — mostly from the University of Toronto — have undertaken undergraduate research projects in the Provart Lab that have supported the BAR, through tool building, data set analysis or algorithm development. Twenty-five of these are co-authors on BAR publications, along with a further 25 trainees from the Provart Lab.
In the past five years, continued operation of the BAR has been ensured by grants from Genome Canada/Ontario Genomics and NSERC — and supplemented by pedagogy grants and a research stipend from the Faculty of Arts & Science to Provart for his role as departmental chair.
With files from the Global Biodata Coalition.