Capturing biological information with class-responsibility-collaboration cards

SUMMARY: Class-responsibility-collaboration (CRC) cards have been used extensively in the software industry for defining complex object-oriented software requirements. We have adapted this tool to capture information about biological components, collaborators and responsibilities within these collaborations, which is not captured by current annotation tools. CRC cards should provide a common ground that will facilitate communication between biologist and computer scientists. AVAILABILITY: A CRC card template, XML representation and XML schema are freely available at http://people.musc.edu/~zhengw/CRCCard/CRC_Card_Index.html SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplemental Figures 1-4.