Advances in Protein Ontology Project

Advances in proteomics and protein expression techniques have lead to the elucidation of large amounts of protein data. Various data mining algorithms and mathematical models provide methods for analyzing this data; however, there are two issues that need to be addressed: (1) the need for standards for defining protein data description and exchange formats so they can be exchanged across the World Wide Web, and also read into data mining software in a consistent format and (2) eliminating errors which arise with the data integration methodologies for complex queries. Protein ontology is designed to meet these needs by providing a structured protein data specification for protein data representation. Protein ontology is a standard for representing protein data in a way that helps in defining data integration and data mining models for protein structure and function. In this paper we summarize the structure of protein ontology we developed earlier, its current applications to various protein families, and its future development