ONTO-PERL: An API for supporting the development and analysis of bio-ontologies

Abstract

Motivation: 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. Availability: The source code code as well as sample usage scripts can be found at: http://search.cpan.org/dist/ONTO-PERL/