Representing physiological processes and their participants with PhysioMaps

Daniel Cook, Maxwell Neal, Robert Hoehndorf, Georgios Gkoutos, John Gennari

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

95 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

BACKGROUND:As the number and size of biological knowledge resources for physiology grows, researchers need improved tools for searching and integrating knowledge and physiological models. Unfortunately, current resources--databases, simulation models, and knowledge bases, for example--are only occasionally and idiosyncratically explicit about the semantics of the biological entities and processes that they describe.

RESULTS:We present a formal approach, based on the semantics of biophysics as represented in the Ontology of Physics for Biology, that divides physiological knowledge into three partitions: structural knowledge, process knowledge and biophysical knowledge. We then computationally integrate these partitions across multiple structural and biophysical domains as computable ontologies by which such knowledge can be archived, reused, and displayed. Our key result is the semi-automatic parsing of biosimulation model code into PhysioMaps that can be displayed and interrogated for qualitative responses to hypothetical perturbations.

CONCLUSIONS:Strong, explicit semantics of biophysics can provide a formal, computational basis for integrating physiological knowledge in a manner that supports visualization of the physiological content of biosimulation models across spatial scales and biophysical domains.
Original languageEnglish
Article numberS2
JournalJournal of Biomedical Semantics
Volume4
Issue numberSuppl 1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Apr 2013
EventProceedings of the Bio-Ontologies Special Interest Group 2012 - Long Beach, California, United States of America
Duration: 13 Jul 201214 Jul 2012

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Representing physiological processes and their participants with PhysioMaps'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this