Plant and Animal Genome XXV Conference

January 13 - 18, 2017

4302

Systems Biology and Ontologies

Systems biology is a scientific approach that emphasizes the structure and dynamic behavior of complex biological systems and their inherent interactions. This approach involves the integration of experimental and computational research and often involves genome-wide “omics” studies. Analyses of these vast datasets have the potential to improve our understanding of the molecular basis of phenotypes, gene expression, molecular interactions, development, species evolution and response to perturbations in the organism(s) and their interactions with the environment.

Ontologies (structured common and controlled vocabularies) provide consistent relationships among different entities, entity types and associated annotations. Such ontology-based rich annotation and network of ontology vocabulary can facilitate inter-specific comparisons at the systems biology scale. Thus, ontologies have become indispensable tools for data curation and analysis in life sciences. The OBO Foundry's biological and biomedical domain ontologies including those for treatments and environments, are being used for the systematic annotation of data: documenting associations between genes, gene products, or sequences, and processes to which they contribute. These annotations facilitate computerized searching and reasoning over large data sets from multiple sources, allowing researchers to address questions in comparative genetics, development, genomics, adaptation, response to environment, medicine and food technology, etc.

The goals of the workshop are to demonstrate (1) development, integration and usage of ontologies and (2) novel systems biology approaches being used to find insights by analyzing the massive amounts of genomics and genetics data becoming available.