My-Plant.org

A Phylogenetically Structured Social Network

Matthew R HanlonNovember 13, 2010

Overview

• iPlant Collaborative• Social networking & Science• My-Plant• Usage Data• The Future

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The iPlant Collaborative

• A $50M NSF effort to build CyberInfrastructure for “Grand Challenges” in the Plant Science Community, focused on food production, fuel production, and drug discovery.

• Current development focus on phylogenetics (understanding evolutionary relationships), and mapping genomic data to expressed characteristics

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Why iPlant at TACC?• iPlant is an examplar project for TACC moving beyond

“simply systems”.– A problem of tremendous import on science and society.

– Computing and data at the center of solutions

– Deep partnerships with domain experts needed for solutions

• Leverages many TACC core competencies:Scalable Algorithms Large Data

Computing Portals/Advanced Interfaces

Visualization Data Integration

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Social Networking & Science

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My-Plant: A Social Network

• Fills some of the spaces in between traditional HPC portals

• Connects individuals– Researchers, students, educators

• Adds additional value to data– Discussions– Related data– Context

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• The usual suspects in social networking features

– Image gallery

– File sharing

– Group/private messaging

– Forums

– Group posts

– “Colleagues”

– User profiles

– Searchable content

Social Networking for the Plant Sciences

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Another social network?

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My-Plant: Clades

• Monophyletic groups of organisms

• The “groups” inMy-Plant

• Self-managed• Aggregation points

for content

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My-Plant: Clades

• Why organize in this way?– Traditional group structure of a social network is

flat– Hierarchical social network is more than just

interest groups

• More added value– Not only are users connected by common clades,

but also by related clades– Content, too, gets added value from this

relationship

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iPlant Integration

• Other iPlant project integration– Large Tree Viewer

• Contextual interlinking

– Discovery Environment (DE)• Sharing

– BIEN name resolution

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User-Directed

• Millions of plant clades– Can’t include them all

• Users suggest clades to add to the network– Reviewed for scientific relevance, actual interest– Clades are managed by users

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Implementation Overview

• Drupal CMS• Developing on the Drupal platform

– Modules

• Authentication

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Drupal CMS

• CMS Platform• Growing number of scientific sites using

Drupal and developing Drupal modules– LifeDesks.org– iPlant

• Rapid, extensible, community support

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Drupal Modules• Clade module

– Main module driving My-Plant– Manages Drupal nodes as “Clades”– Workflows for adding and managing content

• Javascript InfoVis Toolkit (JIT) module– Visualization toolkit– Highlight the hierarchical network in My-Plant– Can be extended to include other viz

• user/content relationships• Clade activity

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Usage Statistics

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Project History

• Project began late February 2010• Development started March 15• “Friendly user” release July 6• Official launch July 28

– Weekend of ASPB, BSA conferences

• 216 users, 57 clades

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Usage Statistics

The first 6 weeks…•3687 visits•74 countries•1877 unique•24647 page views

Usage Statistics

The next 8 weeks…•1204 visits•45 countries•680 unique•5907 page views

The Future of My-Plant

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The Future of My-Plant

• Integration with iPlant Services• Integration with other social

networks/services– Twitter, Facebook

• Open source release of Drupal Modules• Social networking research

– Sudha Ram, University of Arizona

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Acknowledgements• PIs

– Pam Soltis, Doug Soltis, Brent Mishler, Richard Olmstead, Richard McCourt, Martin Wojciechowski

• Graduate students– Lucas Majure, Adam Payton, Susan Tremblay,

Thomas Madsen

• iPlant– Nirav Merchant

• TACC– Michael Gonzales, Stephen Mock, Praveen Nuthulapati

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Acknowledgements

• TACC, University of Texas, Austin• iPlant Collaborative• NSF (#EF-0735191)• University of Florida• University of California, Berkeley• Arizona State University• University of Arizona• University of Washington• Academy of Natural Sciences

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Fin.

November 13, 2010