Preparing Zoomorphology for eScience: 1) Data Standards for Zoomorphology; 2) Basic Formal Ontology & Granularity; 3) Domain Reference Ontology for Metazoan Anatomy; 4) Module for Ontology-based Morphological Descriptions for Morph

• Antragsteller: Dr. Lars Vogt
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Systematik und Morphologie der Tiere
• Förderung: Förderung von 2013 bis 2015
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 225236126

Within the last decades, research practice in life sciences has changed significantly. The development of high-throughput techniques lead to the emergence of data-intensive science, with the consequence that more and more scientists use computers for data exploration. It is already common practice to compile new datasets from openly available data and analyze them under new premises. Because this new approach to science requires online data repositories and applications of the semantic web, it is commonly referred to as eScience. Unfortunately, because of two basic problems, zoomorphology did not take part in eScience so far: 1) its published data exist only in the literature and are thus not openly available and accessible via the internet and, ultimately, get lost (especially the corresponding unpublished raw data: images, serial sections, etc.); 2) to date, morphological descriptions cannot be deposited in general data repositories, because respective standards are not existing, i.e. taxon-independent, homology-free anatomy terminologies and a formalized method of documentation of data that makes morphological descriptions computer parsable. The solution to both problems involves the use of modern terminologies, i.e. ontologies (see OBO Foundry; http://www.obofoundry.org). The required anatomical ontologies still have to be developed. In order to be compatible with each other, they must use a Domain Reference Ontology for Metazoan Anatomy (DROMA) as template, which has to be developed as well. Moreover, to be compatible with the other OBO ontologies, DROMA must be based on OBO's top-level ontology, i.e. the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). In order to accommodate biological reality, BFO must be extended by several categories. Therefore, this proposal is divided into four aspects: 1) continue developing the web pages of the recently started International Consortium of Zoomorphology Standards (http://iczs.org) and launch an internal Data Interest Group; 2) extending BFO and developing a general granularity framework that enables the organization and management of different perspectives on anatomical entities (purely anatomical, developmental, evolutionary, physiologically, etc.) in data repositories; 3) investigating the premises for the development of DROMA and developing DROMA; 4) developing a module for conducting ontology-based descriptions that will establish the already existing morphological database Morph-D-Base (http://www.morphdbase.de/) as a modern data repository for zoomorphological data and therewith providing an openly and freely accessible online web-portal for generating ontology-based descriptions. The resulting morphological data will be sustainably accessible to all biologists, and zoomorphology would be ready for eScience.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen
• Beteiligte Person: Dr. Peter Grobe