Mashing up life science literature resources

In the life sciences one of the pronounced problems is the deluge of new results and data that are produced on a daily basis. This data can take many different forms, e.g. microarray probes, gene sequences, protein structures and is added by hundreds of research centers world-wide in a largely uncoordinated fashion. Thus integration of life science data is growing in importance. Unfortunately, most research centers do not have particular incentive to spend efforts on integrating their data with data produced by others. This task is largely left to large publicly-sponsored institutions like the US National Library of Medicine and similar institutions in other countries. Unfortunately, despite their work in this area, the integration of web-based life science resources is still an open issue (and one ever growing in importance) as these organizations cannot cope with the information deluge that is happening on a daily basis in the life sciences. Thus it becomes essential that as many as possible third parties are engaged in the process. Here we demonstrate a simple prototype of a browser plugin that creates a platform for third parties to contribute to cross-linking related online life science data resources and thus improving the search experience and the productivity of the life science community. The plugin creates a convenient programming interface that minimizes the effort that arises for such third-party contributors. We have provided reference implementations using the plugin that cross-link life science literature resources and illustrate the potential for third parties to create mashups that could be applied also in areas other than the life sciences.