title: ONTO-PERL: an API for supporting the development and analysis of bio-ontologies.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Many biomedical ontologies use OBO or OWL as knowledge representation language. The rapid increase of such ontologies calls for adequate tools to facilitate their use. In particular, there is a pressing need to programmatically deal with such ontologies in many applications, including data integration, text mining, as well as semantic applications supporting translational research.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We present an Application Programming Interface (API) called ONTO-PERL. This API significantly extends the repertoire of available tools supporting the development and analysis of bio-ontologies.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  The source code code as well as sample usage scripts can be found at: http://search.cpan.org/dist/ONTO-PERL/
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Department of Molecular Genetics, Ghent University, Technologiepark 927, 9052 Gent, Belgium. erick.antezana@psb.ugent.be
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Antezana
authors.forename: Mikel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Egaña
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: De Baets
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuiper
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mironov
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface