MorphoCol: An ontology-based knowledgebase for the characterisation of clinically significant bacterial colony morphologies.
Journal:
Journal of biomedical informatics
Published Date:
Mar 25, 2015
Abstract
BACKGROUND: One of the major concerns of the biomedical community is the increasing prevalence of antimicrobial resistant microorganisms. Recent findings show that the diversification of colony morphology may be indicative of the expression of virulence factors and increased resistance to antibiotic therapeutics. To transform these findings, and upcoming results, into a valuable clinical decision making tool, colony morphology characterisation should be standardised. Notably, it is important to establish the minimum experimental information necessary to contextualise the environment that originated the colony morphology, and describe the main morphological features associated unambiguously.