[Gmod-schema] model org/ontology/disease

[gerardo r. <ge...@ho...>]

An ontology can be used to describe an organism, but can it be used to 
describe a disease?   Not in clinical terms (controlled vocabularies in 
medicine are used) but in biochemical terms, a disease may be seen as a mal 
function in one or many metabolic processes. So considering only metabolic 
pathways a disease can be fully described, and because metabolic pathways 
involve proteins and genes then real integration is achieved. The in 
formation in metabolic pathways describing a disease is in a real context.  
Ontology in molecular biology have been used in order to describe the 
function of biological objects; and now they have been incorporated in to 
most existing databases as one of the items, but the relations that this 
objects have among them have been leaved behind (at least has not being 
really incorporated in to the databases that have GO as one of the items in 
entries). So my question is: if a real model of a disease were to be built, 
would not this model have to consider more than just descriptions of the 
different objects that outline it (the disease) and focus more on the 
relations of this objects and how the balance among this objects is being 
disturbed in order for a disease to be produced? The infectious process 
along with all the rest of the processes that the disease have are any way 
part of the disease it self, and for studying the system as such it must be 
at some degree isolated (?).

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