Chado is modular -- it consists of seperate interlocking modules with well-specified dependencies. Current modules include:

• cv (%ontologies%)
• sequence (Bio Sequence^? and Sequence Feature^? data)
• genetic (genetic and phenotypic data)
• expression (expression of gene products such as RNA and protein in time and space)

Chado is a kind of Generic Schema. It uses a relatively small number of table representing basic biological concepts on an abstract level, and relies heavily on %ontologies% (aka cv/ControlledVocabularies) to allow modeling of specific subtypes of this data. The Sequence Ontology is particularly important for Chado.

The main Chado designers are David Emmert^? and Chris Mungall. A number of other people have contributed significantly to the design, including (in no particular order): Stan Letovsky^? Richard Bruskiewitz^? Pinglei Zho^? Shenquiang Shu^? Colin Wiel^? Suzanna Lewis Aubrey De Grey^?

-- ChrisMungall - 27 Feb 2005