functional genomics use case

[jlp2duke]

Suppose a user is studying a biological process, e.g., the development of root nodules, for which they have data regarding qualitative variability across taxa; they want functional data to support potential involvement of small set of candidate genes. Data is likely to be heterogeneous and relatively unstructured. Keyword-style ontology-powered searching will case a wide net vs. structured querying, results will differ. Faceted browsing? Proposed solution?