Simplified ontologies allowing comparison of developmental mammalian gene expression

Adele Kruger¹ , Oliver Hofmann¹ , Piero Carninci²^,3 , Yoshihide Hayashizaki²^,3 and Winston Hide¹

¹South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape, Bellville 7535, South Africa

²Genome Exploration Research Group (Genome Network Project Core Group), RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center (GSC), RIKEN Yokohama Institute, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 230-0045, Japan

³Genome Science Laboratory, Discovery Research Institute, RIKEN Wako Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2007, 8:R229doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-10-r229


Published:	25 October 2007

Subject areas: Bioinformatics, Development

Abstract

Model organisms represent an important resource for understanding the fundamental aspects of mammalian biology. Mapping of biological phenomena between model organisms is complex and if it is to be meaningful, a simplified representation can be a powerful means for comparison. The Developmental eVOC ontologies presented here are simplified orthogonal ontologies describing the temporal and spatial distribution of developmental human and mouse anatomy. We demonstrate the ontologies by identifying genes showing a bias for developmental brain expression in human and mouse.