Model Composition for Physiology: A Proposal for an Ontology-Based E-Science Infrastructure

• Ely Edison Matos UFJF
• Fernanda Campos UFJF
• Regina Braga UFJF
• Rodrigo Weber UFJF

Abstract

The amount of information generated by research in biological sciences has lead to an intensive use of models. Mathematical and computational modeling need accurate description to share and simulate models as formulated by original authors. CellML is a markup language that uses XML to describe such models in the context of biological process. It allows a raw description of variables, equations and components, but it is insufficient to express semantically the model. Our research focus on the use of ontologies to enrich the construction of new cell models. In this paper we introduce the Cell Component Ontology - CelO, an ontology expressed in OWL-DL. This ontology captures both the structure of a cell model and the properties of functional components. We are using this ontology in a Web project where the use of CelO allows describing, reasoning, querying and composing CellML models. It aims to improve reuse and composition of existent components and allow semantic validation of new models.

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