The Cell Ontology is an
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities ...
that aims at capturing the diversity of
cell types in
animals
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
. It is part of the
Open Biomedical and Biological Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. The Cell Ontology identifiers and organizational structure are used to annotate data at the level of cell types, for example in
single-cell RNA-seq studies. It is one important resource in the construction of the
Human Cell Atlas
The Human Cell Atlas is a project to describe all cell types in the human body. The initiative was announced by a consortium after its inaugural meeting in London in October 2016, which established the first phase of the project. Aviv Regev and ...
.
The Cell Ontology was first described in an
academic article in 2005.
See also
*
Gene ontology
The Gene Ontology (GO) is a major bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species. More specifically, the project aims to: 1) maintain and develop its controlled vocabulary of gene and g ...
*
OBO Foundry
References
External Links
Cell Ontology GitHub page
Ontology (information science)
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