Uberon and the Gene Ontology

Uberon is closely integrated with the Gene Ontology (GO), as well as other ontologies. Uberon handles gross anatomy (above the level of the cell), whereas GO deals with both biological processes and cellular components (anatomy at the subcellular level).

Axioms from GO that reference Uberon

• Download go-plus from http://geneontology.org/page/download-ontology

Axioms from Uberon that reference GO

• Use uberon/ext.owl

Axioms that connect GO and Uberon via some intermediate

• Uberon <-> CL <-> GO Cell Component
  • this should all be present in uberon/ext

Other

• Uberon <-> Phenotype <-> GO
• GO <-> Uberon <-> species-specific anatomy ontology

History

GO preceded Uberon by a number of years. GO originally had an implicit ontology embedded within it. For example,

• brain development
  • <--part of-- forebrain development
  • brain morphogenesis
    • <--part of-- forebrain morphogenesis

Following the design pattern of Normalization we extracted out the implicit ontology into its own module. This was done at the same time as a project for linking across species-specific anatomy ontologies, so there was a great deal of synergy here. See the Uberon paper for more information.