Gkoutos Georgios V, Hoehndorf Robert, Tsaprouni Loukia, Schofield Paul N
Department of Computer Science, University of Aberystwyth, Old College, King Street, Aberystwyth, SY23 2AX, UK.
Centre for Computational Biology, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Mamm Genome. 2015 Oct;26(9-10):540-7. doi: 10.1007/s00335-015-9590-y. Epub 2015 Jul 28.
The development of ontologies for describing animal behaviour has proved to be one of the most difficult of all scientific knowledge domains. Ranging from neurological processes to human emotions, the range and scope needed for such ontologies is highly challenging, but if data integration and computational tools such as automated reasoning are to be fully applied in this important area the underlying principles of these ontologies need to be better established and development needs detailed coordination. Whilst the state of scientific knowledge is always paramount in ontology and formal description framework design, this is a particular problem with neurobehavioural ontologies where our understanding of the relationship between behaviour and its underlying biophysical basis is currently in its infancy. In this commentary, we discuss some of the fundamental problems in designing and using behaviour ontologies, and present some of the best developed tools in this domain.
事实证明，用于描述动物行为的本体论发展是所有科学知识领域中最具挑战性的任务之一。从神经学过程到人类情感，此类本体论所需的范围和广度极具挑战性，但如果要在这一重要领域充分应用数据集成和诸如自动推理等计算工具，就需要更好地确立这些本体论的基本原则，并且其发展需要详细的协调。虽然科学知识状况在本体论和形式描述框架设计中始终至关重要，但这在神经行为本体论中是一个特别的问题，因为我们目前对行为与其潜在生物物理基础之间关系的理解尚处于起步阶段。在这篇评论中，我们讨论了设计和使用行为本体论中的一些基本问题，并介绍了该领域一些最完善的工具。
