Ontology

Ontology is a controlled and standardized vocabulary with certain kind of reasoning power. It is formulated using formal languages; such as Web Ontology Language (OWL), OBO, etc. Biological data are widely dispersed and they sometimes use different terminological and classificatory frameworks for their representation. This makes finding and sharing biological data very difficult. If all data and information in a given domain are formulated in a common, standard way, then people can share their data and information with rest of the world as NIH now mendates. Ontology provides such platform. It stores all the information using a standardized language.