Systems Biology Ontology

The Systems Biology Ontology is a set of controlled, relational vocabularies of terms commonly used in Systems Biology, and in particular in computational modelling. It consists of seven orthogonal vocabularies defining: reaction participants roles (e.g. "substrate"), quantitative parameters (e.g. "Michaelis constant"), classification of mathematical expressions describing the system (e.g. "mass action rate law"), modelling framework used (e.g. "logical framework"), the nature of the entity (e.g. "macromolecule"), the type of interaction (e.g. "process"), as well as a branch to define the different types of metadata that may be present within a model.

SBO terms can be used to introduce a layer of semantic information into the standard description of a model (for instance through the sboTerm attribute of sbml), or to annotate the results of biochemical experiments in order to facilitate their efficient reuse. SBO is an Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) candidate ontology, and is free for use. More information about SBO can be found in the FAQ.