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Summary: PART-OF RELATIONS IN ANATOMY ONTOLOGIES:
A PROPOSAL FOR RDFS AND OWL FORMALISATIONS
J.S. AITKEN, B.L. WEBBER
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh,
Appleton Tower, Crichton St. Edinburgh EH8 9LE
J.B.L. BARD
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh,
George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9XD
Abstract
Part-of relations are central to anatomy. However, the definition,
formalisation and use of part-of in anatomy ontologies is problematic.
This paper surveys existing formal approaches, as well as the use of part-
of in the Open Biological Ontologies (OBO) anatomies of model species.
Based on this analysis, we propose a minimal ontology for anatomy which
is expressed in the Semantic Web languages RDFS and OWL-Full. The
paper concludes with a description of the context of this work in captur-
ing cross-species tissue homologies and analogies.
1 Introduction
The increasing number of anatomies being defined, published and linked
to gene expression data provides new opportunities to explore tissue ho-
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