Formal
Ontology
The
storage of anatomies and matching of tissues across
species requires formal ontologies to enable relationships
between tissues to be defined. For
example, "Part-of" relations are central to anatomy
descriptions. However, the definition, formalisation
and use of part-of in anatomy ontologies is problematic.
We
have surveyed existing formal approaches, as well
as the use of part-of in the Open Biological Ontologies
(OBO) anatomies of model species. Based on this analysis,
we propose a minimal ontology for anatomy which is
expressed
in the Semantic Web languages RDFS and OWL-Full.
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Example
of the use of RDFS and OWL.
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COBrA,
a tool to allow experts to make links between two
anatomies has been developed. The links are annotated
with terms
from a Cell-Type ontology
as a justification of the homology or analogy.
A
screenshot of COBrA being used to make
the link between the intestinal epithelium of
C elegans anatomy ontology
with the absorptive epithelium of the cell-type
ontology.
COBrA
was developed by Roman Korf as part of his MSc
project.
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