title: Towards improving phenotype representation in OWL.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Phenotype ontologies are used in species-specific databases for the annotation of mutagenesis experiments and to characterize human diseases. The Entity-Quality (EQ) formalism is a means to describe complex phenotypes based on one or more affected entities and a quality. EQ-based definitions have been developed for many phenotype ontologies, including the Human and Mammalian Phenotype ontologies.
  
  
  METHODS
  We analyze formalizations of complex phenotype descriptions in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) that are based on the EQ model, identify several representational challenges and analyze potential solutions to address these challenges.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In particular, we suggest a novel, role-based approach to represent relational qualities such as concentration of iron in spleen, discuss its ontological foundation in the General Formal Ontology (GFO) and evaluate its representation in OWL and the benefits it can bring to the representation of phenotype annotations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our analysis of OWL-based representations of phenotypes can contribute to improving consistency and expressiveness of formal phenotype descriptions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. frank.loebe@informatik.uni-leipzig.de.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Loebe
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Stumpf
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hoehndorf
authors.forename: Heinrich
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Herre