Animal trait ontology: The importance and usefulness of a unified trait vocabulary for animal species

Ontologies help to identify and formally define the entities and relationships in specific domains of interest. Bio-ontologies, in particular, play a central role in the annotation, integration, analysis, and interpretation of biological data. Missing from the number of bio-ontologies is one that in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of animal science 2008-06, Vol.86 (6), p.1485-1491
Main Authors: Hughes, L.M, Bao, J, Hu, Z.-L, Honavar, V, Reecy, J.M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal productions
Animal Trait Ontology program
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Biology
Cattle
Chickens
Computational Biology - methods
computer software
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
genome
Genomics
Genotype & phenotype
Livestock
Male
National Animal Genome Research Program
Ontology
phenotype
research programs
Species Specificity
Swine
Terminology as Topic
Terrestrial animal productions
traits
USDA
Vertebrates
Vocabularies & taxonomies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ontologies help to identify and formally define the entities and relationships in specific domains of interest. Bio-ontologies, in particular, play a central role in the annotation, integration, analysis, and interpretation of biological data. Missing from the number of bio-ontologies is one that includes phenotypic trait information found in livestock species. As a result, the Animal Trait Ontology (ATO) project being carried out under the auspices of the USDA-National Animal Genome Research Program is aimed at the development of a standardized trait ontology for farm animals and software tools to assist the research community in collaborative creation, editing, maintenance, and use of such an ontology. The ATO is currently inclusive of cattle, pig, and chicken species, and will include other livestock species in the future. The ATO will eventually be linked to other species (e.g., human, rat, mouse) so that comparative analysis can be efficiently performed between species.
ISSN:0021-8812
1525-3163
DOI:10.2527/jas.2008-0930