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Towards improving phenotype representation in OWL.


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Authors

Loebe, Frank 
Stumpf, Frank 
Hoehndorf, Robert 
Herre, Heinrich 

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Phenotype ontologies are used in species-specific databases for the annotation of mutagenesis experiments and to characterize human diseases. The Entity-Quality (EQ) formalism is a means to describe complex phenotypes based on one or more affected entities and a quality. EQ-based definitions have been developed for many phenotype ontologies, including the Human and Mammalian Phenotype ontologies. METHODS: We analyze formalizations of complex phenotype descriptions in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) that are based on the EQ model, identify several representational challenges and analyze potential solutions to address these challenges. RESULTS: In particular, we suggest a novel, role-based approach to represent relational qualities such as concentration of iron in spleen, discuss its ontological foundation in the General Formal Ontology (GFO) and evaluate its representation in OWL and the benefits it can bring to the representation of phenotype annotations. CONCLUSION: Our analysis of OWL-based representations of phenotypes can contribute to improving consistency and expressiveness of formal phenotype descriptions.

Description

Keywords

0806 Information Systems, Genetics, Networking and Information Technology R&D

Journal Title

J Biomed Semantics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1480
2041-1480

Volume Title

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
European Commission (248502)