Bioinformatics Group, MRC Mammalian Genetics Unit, Harwell, Oxfordshire, OX11 0RD, UK. g.gkoutos@har.mrc.ac.uk
The mouse is an important model of human genetic disease. Describing phenotypes of mutant mice in a standard, structured manner that will facilitate data mining is a major challenge for bioinformatics. Here we describe a novel, compositional approach to this problem which combines core ontologies from a variety of sources. This produces a framework with greater flexibility, power and economy than previous approaches. We discuss some of the issues this approach raises.