Smith Barry, Ashburner Michael, Rosse Cornelius, Bard Jonathan, Bug William, Ceusters Werner, Goldberg Louis J, Eilbeck Karen, Ireland Amelia, Mungall Christopher J, Leontis Neocles, Rocca-Serra Philippe, Ruttenberg Alan, Sansone Susanna-Assunta, Scheuermann Richard H, Shah Nigam, Whetzel Patricia L, Lewis Suzanna
Department of Philosophy and New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14203, USA.
Nat Biotechnol. 2007 Nov;25(11):1251-5. doi: 10.1038/nbt1346.
The value of any kind of data is greatly enhanced when it exists in a form that allows it to be integrated with other data. One approach to integration is through the annotation of multiple bodies of data using common controlled vocabularies or 'ontologies'. Unfortunately, the very success of this approach has led to a proliferation of ontologies, which itself creates obstacles to integration. The Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) consortium is pursuing a strategy to overcome this problem. Existing OBO ontologies, including the Gene Ontology, are undergoing coordinated reform, and new ontologies are being created on the basis of an evolving set of shared principles governing ontology development. The result is an expanding family of ontologies designed to be interoperable and logically well formed and to incorporate accurate representations of biological reality. We describe this OBO Foundry initiative and provide guidelines for those who might wish to become involved.
当任何一种数据以能够与其他数据整合的形式存在时，其价值会得到极大提升。整合的一种方法是通过使用通用受控词汇表或“本体”对多个数据集进行注释。不幸的是，这种方法的成功导致了本体的激增，这本身就给整合带来了障碍。开放生物医学本体（OBO）联盟正在推行一种策略来克服这个问题。现有的OBO本体，包括基因本体，正在进行协调改革，并且正在基于一套不断发展的、指导本体开发的共享原则创建新的本体。其结果是一个不断扩大的本体家族，旨在实现互操作性、逻辑结构良好，并纳入对生物现实的准确表述。我们描述了这个OBO铸造计划，并为那些可能希望参与其中的人提供指导方针。
