Ontologies for use in Systems Biology: SBO, KiSAO and TEDDY

Abstract

The use of computational modelling in the description and analysis of biological systems is at the heart of Systems Biology. Besides the information stored in a core model, there is increasingly a need to provide additional semantic information: to identify model components, to assist in biological interpretation of models, to define simulation conditions and to describe simulation results. This information deficit can be addressed through the use of ontologies. We describe here three ontologies created specifically to address the needs of the Systems Biology community in each sub-division, and illustrate their practical use with the 'Repressilator' model (Elowitz and Leibler, 2000)