Relations in biomedical ontologies

Barry Smith(University at Buffalo, State University of New York), Werner Ceusters(Saarland University), Bert R. E. Klagges(Leipzig University), Jacob Köhler(Rothamsted Research), Anand Kumar(University of Manchester), Jane Lomax(European Bioinformatics Institute), Chris Mungall(University of California, Berkeley), Fabian Neuhaus(University of Manchester), Alan Rector(University of Washington), Cornelius Rosse(University of Washington)
Genome biology
April 28, 2005
Cited by 1,044Open Access
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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.


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