Extracting Metadata from Biological Experimental Data

The process of automatically extracting metadata from an experiment’s dataset is an important stage in efficiently integrating this dataset with data available in public bioinformatics data sources. Metadata extracted from the experiment’s dataset can be stored in databases and used to verify data extracted from other experiments’ datasets. Moreover, the biologist can keep track of the dataset so that it can be easily retrieved next time. The extracted metadata can be mined to discover useful knowledge as well as integrated with other information using domain ontology to reveal hidden relationships. The experiment’s dataset may contain several kinds of metadata that can be used to add semantic value to linked data. This paper describes an approach for extracting metadata from an experiment’s dataset. This system has been used in a preliminary investigation of aging across species.