The MetNet platform

With more and more -omics datasets becoming available, it becomes increasingly difficult to tie them all together. How can biologists properly combine genomics with proteomics and metabolomics datasets? The data is generated through different experiments with different platforms from different vendors. The file formats that these vendors use are often proprietary and do not interchange easily. Community standards lack behind what's possible because it takes time to reach consensus on how to provide for requested features. Other community standards are too loosely defined, leading to communication conflicts, since identical concepts may be represented in different ways.

MetNet does not claim to have a solution to all these problems, but our solutions try to overcome at least some of the obstacles described:

• MetNet focuses on plant systems. While independent portals have been set up for individual plant models, this has not yet been done with comparative applications in mind. When comparative features are provided, plant systems often come as an afterthought, rather than a primary focus.
• MetNet is more than just another database. We are an integrated platform for Systems Biology. We offer data extraction from our database, as well as provide a range of applications on top of this to get you started analyzing your data.
• MetNet acknowledges it is not and will never be the authorative and final source on plant model organisms. To that aim, we provide our data to interested third-parties through a variety of methods and formats.