Method
Relations in biomedical ontologies
1 Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, Saarland University, D-66041 Saarbrücken, Germany
2 Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA
3 European Centre for Ontological Research, Saarland University, D-66041 Saarbrücken, Germany
4 Department of Genetics, University of Leipzig, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
5 Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, AL5 2JQ, UK
6 European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, CB10 1SD, UK
7 HHMI, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94729, USA
8 Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
9 Department of Biological Structure, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
Genome Biology 2005, 6:R46 doi:10.1186/gb-2005-6-5-r46
Published: 28 April 2005Abstract
To enhance the treatment of relations in biomedical ontologies we advance a methodology for providing consistent and unambiguous formal definitions of the relational expressions used in such ontologies in a way designed to assist developers and users in avoiding errors in coding and annotation. The resulting Relation Ontology can promote interoperability of ontologies and support new types of automated reasoning about the spatial and temporal dimensions of biological and medical phenomena.
