Title: A database ontology for signal transduction pathways

Authors: Andreas Kupfer, Silke Eckstein, Britta Stormann, Brigitte Mathiak

Addresses: Institute of Information Systems, Technical University of Braunschweig, Muhlenpfordtstr. 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany. ' Institute of Information Systems, Technical University of Braunschweig, Muhlenpfordtstr. 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany. ' Robert Koch Institute, ZBS3 Mikrobielle Toxine, Nordufer 20, 13353 Berlin, Germany. ' Institute of Information Systems, Technical University of Braunschweig, Muhlenpfordtstr. 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Abstract: Ontologies are one of the key technologies for data integration and meta-databases, by connecting databases at a semantical level. Still, the database has to be connected to the ontology and vice versa. To achieve this, we propose a two step process. First, we automatically generate an ontology directly from the database schema. Next, we annotate this with concepts from a domain specific ontology. We demonstrate this for signal transduction pathways, which describe how cells can react to external stimuli. In this paper we present our mapping of database schemas to ontologies and describe how these ontologies can be enriched by semantical information.

Keywords: database schema; semantic annotation; OWL ontology; signal transduction pathways; bioinformatics; cells; external stimuli; semantics; ontologies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBRA.2007.015006

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, 2007 Vol.3 No.3, pp.326 - 340

Published online: 04 Sep 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article