Cellosaurus

Cellosaurus

Content
Description	Cellosaurus: a knowledge resource on cell lines
Data types captured	Cell lines
Organisms	Vertebrate, Insect, Tick
Contact
Research center	Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Laboratory	CALIPHO
Authors	Amos_Bairoch
Access
Data format	Flat file database and OBO
Website	web.expasy.org/cellosaurus/
Tools
Web	Search
Miscellaneous
License	Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
Versioning	Yes
Data release frequency	4 to 6 releases per year
Curation policy	Yes - manual
Bookmarkable entities	Yes - individual cell line entries

Cellosaurus is an on-line knowledge resource on cell lines. Its scope includes immortalised cell lines, naturally immortal cell lines (example: embryonic stem cells) and finite life cell lines when those are distributed and used widely. The Cellosaurus provides a wealth of manually curated information; for each cell line it lists a recommended name, synonyms and the species of origin. Other types of information include standardised disease terminology (for cancer or genetic disorder cell lines), the transformant used to immortalise a cell line, transfected or knocked-out genes, web links, publication references and cross-references to more than 50 different databases, cell collections and other relevant resources.

As many cell lines used in research have been misidentified or contaminated the Cellosaurus keeps track of problematic cells including all those listed in the International Cell Line Authentication Committee (ICLAC) ^[1] tables.

For human cell lines it provides short tandem repeat (STR) profile information which is critical to the important process of cell line authentication.

It is developed by Amos Bairoch at the CALIPHO group ^[2] of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB).

References

1. http://iclac.org/wp-content/uploads/Cross-Contaminations-v7_2.pdf
2. CALIPHO group, on the web site of the SIB

External links

• Cellosaurus
• SIB - The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics