Quercus suber (cork oak) is an evergreen tree native to the Mediterranean basin, which plays a key role in the ecology and economy of this area. Over the last decades, this species has gone through an observable decline, mostly due to environmental factors. Deciphering the mechanisms of cork oak’s response to the environment and getting a deep insight into its biology are crucial to counteract biotic and abiotic stresses compromising the stability of a unique ecosystem. In the light of these setbacks, the publication of the genome in 2018 was a major step towards understanding the genetic make-up of this species. In an effort to integrate this information in a comprehensive, accessible and intuitive format, we have developed The Cork Oak Genome Database Portal (CorkOakDB). The CorkOakDB is supported by the BioData.pt e-infrastructure, the Portuguese ELIXIR node for biological data. The portal gives public access to search and explore the curated genomic and transcriptomic data on this species. Moreover, CorkOakDB provides a user-friendly interface and functional tools to help the research community take advantage of the increased accessibility to genomic information. A study case is provided to highlight the functionalities of the portal. CorkOakDB guarantees the update, curation and data collection, aiming to collect data besides the genetic/genomic information, in order to become the main repository in cork oak research. Database URL:  http://corkoakdb.org/

The complexity of cancer research stems from leaning on several biomedical disciplines for relevant sources of data, many of which are complex in their own right. A holistic view of cancer—which is critical for precision medicine approaches—hinges on integrating a variety of heterogeneous data sources under a cohesive knowledge model, a role which biomedical ontologies can fill. This study reviews the application of ontologies and knowledge graphs in cancer research. In total, our review encompasses 141 published works, which we categorized under 14 hierarchical categories according to their usage of ontologies and knowledge graphs. We also review the most commonly used ontologies and newly developed ones. Our review highlights the growing traction of ontologies in biomedical research in general, and cancer research in particular. Ontologies enable data accessibility, interoperability and integration, support data analysis, facilitate data interpretation and data mining, and more recently, with the emergence of the knowledge graph paradigm, support the application of Artificial Intelligence methods to unlock new knowledge from a holistic view of the available large volumes of heterogeneous data.

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