The Legume Information System (LIS) is legume sciences portal specifically for legume breeders and researchers, established and supported by the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. The mission of the Legume Information System is "to facilitate discoveries and crop improvement in the legumes," in particular to improve crop yields, their nutritional value, and our understanding of basic legume science.
Development of the Legume Information System is a joint venture between the National Center for Genome Resources (NCGR) and the USDA-ARS at Iowa State University. In 2014, development effort on LIS shifted from the comparative-legumes.org domain to legumeinfo.org. The comparative-legumes site was developed using the Ruby on Rails framework, and the LegumeInfo site is developed using the Tripal content management system.
The reference species as a backbone for orphan species research
A fundamental approach taken in LIS is facilitate research in the orphan species by taking advantage of more extensive knowledge developed for the reference species. Use of synteny and local similarity, for instance, provides a basis for trait inference.
Gonzales, MD; Gajendran, K; Farmer, AD; Archuleta, E; Beavis, WD (2007). "Leveraging model legume information to find candidate genes for soybean sudden death syndrome using the legume information system". Plant Bioinformatics. Methods in Molecular Biology. Vol. 406. pp. 245–59. doi:10.1007/978-1-59745-535-0_11. ISBN978-1-58829-653-5. PMID18287696.