Relations in biomedical ontologies

Smith, Barry and Ceusters, Werner and Klagges, Bert and Köhler, Jacob and Kumar, Anand and Lomax, Jane and Mungall, Chris and Neuhaus, Fabian and Rector, Alan L and Rosse, Cornelius (2005) Relations in biomedical ontologies. Genome Biology 6(5):R46.1-R46.15.

Abstract

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.