Ontology-based resources for bioinformatics analysis. (15th September 2011)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Viti, Federica; Merelli, Ivan; Calabria, Andrea; Cozzi, Paolo; Mosca, Ettore; Alfieri, Roberta; Milanesi, Luciano
• Is Part Of: International journal of metadata, semantics and ontologies. Volume 6:Number 1(2011)
• Page Start: 35
• Page End: 45
• Publication Date: 2011-09-15
• Subjects: biomolecular ontologies -- bioinformatics resources; Metadata -- Periodicals; Semantic Web -- Periodicals; Ontologies (Information retrieval) -- Periodicals; Data structures (Computer science) -- Periodicals; Information theory -- Periodicals; 005.74
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-2621

Abstract

A number of specific web accessible databases are developed in order to shed light into biomolecular data, providing novel perspectives about particular scientific problems or presenting innovative data integration approaches. Ontologies constitute an important enhancement, since they allow a better representation of biological data, by providing a hierarchical structure to organise information, enabling more effective queries, statistical analysis and semantic web searching. Here we present our experience in exploiting ontologies to enrich biomolecular databases in diverse biomolecular contexts. The semantic layer improves data organisation, accessibility and analysis and represents an invaluable support to identify relations among biological components.