9121456 Bolender This project will create, using information technologies, a new infrastructure for quantitative morphology (QM) in the life sciences. It includes: (1) software for tutorials, databases, and query tools, (2) files of published data for 22 animal organs, and (3) facilities for electronic submission of data. The significance of the project is that it makes the methods and data of QM readily available to the community, organizes structural information hierarchically, and provides new research tools. The new tutorial supplies training in QM, which include morphometry, stereology, and reconstruction, through use of detailed descriptions, worked examples, calculation workscreens, simulations, and toolkits. It provides: (1) background material for biologists and computer scientists wishing to use the QM databases and (2) state-of-the-art tools for researchers interested in using these methods in the laboratory. The databases include a tutorial, data entry forms, published data and query tools. Reports allow end-users to standardize, recycle, and create new data. A new representation of QM data, called the structural phenotype, simplifies the task of searching for structural analogies and generalizations across the literature. The project actively supports the use of QM and contributes a structural component to Biomatrix. Furthermore the investigator will begin to port his work to the workstation environment. This proposal is being jointly supported by the Applications of Advanced Technology program in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources as well as the Computational Biology Activities program. *** Quantitative Morphology Tutorials and Databases for Biology
