Systems Biology Ontology

The Systems Biology Ontology (Engl. Systems Biology Ontology ), SBO abbreviated, is a collection of terms defined labels for entities, processes and events in systems biology models . With SBML Level 2 Version 3, the terms contained therein became an integral part of the Systems Biology Markup Language in order to be able to clearly identify the components contained therein. The driving force behind the development of the SOO is to provide biology with a clarity in the communication of processes that is known from other scientific disciplines, especially engineering.

All SBO terms are numbered consecutively with a unique identification number. The terms are summarized in a directed, acyclic graph, i.e. there are general terms (categorical) and detailed terms. Some terms have already been marked as obsolete. For reasons of compatibility, these are still available, but should no longer be used.

The SBO can be searched on the website of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI).

Web links

• http://www.ebi.ac.uk/sbo SBO homepage