BioTopLite: An upper level ontology for the life sciences. Evolution, design and application

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To present and theoretically underpin recent changes in the upper level ontology BioTopLite2 and to discuss the effectiveness of upper level ontologies in the design process of domain ontologies. BACKGROUNDs: BioTop is an upper level ontology for the life sciences, based on OWL DL. Experiences with the application of BioTop and changing requirements have required the introduction of a light version (BioTopLite). The usefulness of upper level ontologies is controversial. METHODS: This paper provides a survey over the evolution of BioTop, use cases, and lessons learnt. It presents the main features of a new version of BioTop, motivated by special domain requirements. In particular it is highlighted how the new version, BioTopLite2 addresses the problem of time-indexed relations between continuants, given the restriction to two-valued relations in OWL. RESULTS: The new version is optimized to more user-friendliness by reducing the relations to a minimum. BioTopLite is available at http://purl.org/biotop.