Toward a data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas

Building a data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas using existing infrastructure and platforms will enable biologists and data scientists to glean insights into plant biology. We review how a data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas might be built using existing infrastructure and platforms. The Human Cell Atlas has developed an extensive infrastructure for human and mouse single cell data, while the European Bioinformatics Institute has developed a Single Cell Expression Atlas, that currently houses several plant data sets. We discuss issues related to appropriate ontologies for describing a plant single cell experiment. We imagine how such an infrastructure will enable biologists and data scientists to glean new insights into plant biology in the coming decades, as long as such data are made accessible to the community in an open manner.

Automated summary

Building a data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas using existing infrastructure and platforms will allow biologists and data scientists to gain new insights into plant biology. The development of the Human Cell Atlas and the Single Cell Expression Atlas by the European Bioinformatics Institute has laid the foundation for constructing the data infrastructure for the Plant Cell Atlas. The utilization of appropriate ontologies is crucial for describing plant single cell experiments.