Aber-OWL: a framework for ontology-based data access in biology

TL;DR

Aber-OWL is a framework that provides automated reasoning services for biological ontologies, enabling semantic access to biological data and literature through web services and interfaces.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive infrastructure including repository, web services, and interfaces for ontology-based data access in biology.

Findings

Provides reasoning services for bio-ontologies

Enables semantic search of biological data and literature

Accessible via web interfaces and services

Abstract

Many ontologies have been developed in biology and these ontologies increasingly contain large volumes of formalized knowledge commonly expressed in the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Computational access to the knowledge contained within these ontologies relies on the use of automated reasoning. We have developed the Aber-OWL infrastructure that provides reasoning services for bio-ontologies. Aber-OWL consists of an ontology repository, a set of web services and web interfaces that enable ontology-based semantic access to biological data and literature. Aber-OWL is freely available at http://aber-owl.net.