MIRIAM resources:: tools to generate and resolve robust cross-references in Systems Biology

Background: The Minimal Information Requested In the Annotation of biochemical Models (MIRIAM) is a set of guidelines for the annotation and curation processes of computational models, in order to facilitate their exchange and reuse. An important part of the standard consists in the controlled annotation of model components, based on Uniform Resource Identifiers. In order to enable interoperability of this annotation, the community has to agree on a set of standard URIs, corresponding to recognised data types. MIRIAM Resources are being developed to support the use of those URIs. Results: MIRIAM Resources are a set of on-line services created to catalogue data types, their URIs and the corresponding physical URLs (or resources), whether data types are controlled vocabularies or primary data resources. MIRIAM Resources are composed of several components: MIRIAM Database stores the information, MIRIAM Web Services allows to programmatically access the database, MIRIAM Library provides an access to the Web Services and MIRIAM Web Application is a way to access the data (human browsing) and also to edit or add entries. Conclusions: The project MIRIAM Resources allows an easy access to MIRIAM URIs and the associated information and is therefore crucial to foster a general use of MIRIAM annotations in computational models of biological processes.