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The Evidence & Conclusion Ontology (ECO) is a community standard for summarizing evidence in scientific research in a controlled, structured way. Annotations at the world's most frequented biological databases (e.g. model organisms, UniProt, Gene Ontology) are supported using ECO terms. ECO describes evidence derived from experimental and computational methods, author statements curated from the literature, inferences drawn by curators, and other types of evidence. Here, we describe recent ECO developments and collaborations, most notably: (i) a new ECO website containing user documentation, up-to-date news, and visualization tools; (ii) improvements to the ontology structure; (iii) implementing logic via an ongoing collaboration with the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI); (iv) addition of numerous experimental evidence types; and (v) addition of new evidence classes describing computationally derived evidence. Due to its utility, popularity, and simplicity, ECO is now expanding into realms beyond the protein annotation community, for example the biodiversity and phenotype communities. As ECO continues to grow as a resource, we are seeking new users and new use cases, with the hope that ECO will continue to be a broadly used and easy-to-implement community standard for representing evidence in diverse biological applications. Feel free to visit two ECO-sponsored workshops at ICBO 2016 to learn more: 1. “An introduction to the Evidence and Conclusion Ontology and representing evidence in scientific research” and 2. “OBI-ECO Interactions & Evidence”.
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The Evidence and Conclusion Ontology (ECO): Supporting GO Annotations. In Dessimoz, C. and Škunca, N (eds.), "The Gene Ontology Handbook".
The Evidence and Conclusion Ontology (ECO) is a community resource for describing the various types of evidence that are generated during the course of a scientific study and which are typically used to support assertions made by researchers. ECO describes multiple evidence types, including evidence resulting from experimental (i.e., wet lab) techniques, evidence arising from computational methods, statements made by authors (whether or not supported by evidence), and inferences drawn by researchers curating the literature. In addition to summarizing the evidence that supports a particular assertion, ECO also offers a means to document whether a computer or a human performed the process of making the annotation. Incorporating ECO into an annotation system makes it possible to leverage the structure of the ontology such that associated data can be grouped hierarchically, users can select data associated with particular evidence types, and quality control pipelines can be optimized. Today, over 30 resources, including the Gene Ontology, use the Evidence and Conclusion Ontology to represent both evidence and how annotations are made.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1458400
- PAR ID:
- 10021657
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Methods in molecular biology
- Volume:
- 1446
- ISSN:
- 1064-3745
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 245-259
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Evidence & Conclusion Ontology (ECO) is a community standard for summarizing evidence in scientific research in a controlled, structured way. Annotations at the world's most frequented biological databases (e.g. model organisms, UniProt, Gene Ontology) are supported using ECO terms. ECO describes evidence derived from experimental and computational methods, author statements curated from the literature, inferences drawn by curators, and other types of evidence. Here, we describe recent ECO developments and collaborations, most notably: (i) a new ECO website containing user documentation, up-to-date news, and visualization tools; (ii) improvements to the ontology structure; (iii) implementing logic via an ongoing collaboration with the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI); (iv) addition of numerous experimental evidence types; and (v) addition of new evidence classes describing computationally derived evidence. Due to its utility, popularity, and simplicity, ECO is now expanding into realms beyond the protein annotation community, for example the biodiversity and phenotype communities. As ECO continues to grow as a resource, we are seeking new users and new use cases, with the hope that ECO will continue to be a broadly used and easy-to-implement community standard for representing evidence in diverse biological applications. Feel free to visit two ECO-sponsored workshops at ICBO 2016 to learn more: 1. “An introduction to the Evidence and Conclusion Ontology and representing evidence in scientific research” and 2. “OBI-ECO Interactions & Evidence”.more » « less
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The Evidence & Conclusion Ontology (ECO) is a community standard for summarizing evidence in scientific research in a controlled, structured way. Annotations at the world's most frequented biological databases (e.g. model organisms, UniProt, Gene Ontology) are supported using ECO terms. ECO describes evidence derived from experimental and computational methods, author statements curated from the literature, inferences drawn by curators, and other types of evidence. Here, we describe recent ECO developments and collaborations, most notably: (i) a new ECO website containing user documentation, up-to-date news, and visualization tools; (ii) improvements to the ontology structure; (iii) implementing logic via an ongoing collaboration with the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI); (iv) addition of numerous experimental evidence types; and (v) addition of new evidence classes describing computationally derived evidence. Due to its utility, popularity, and simplicity, ECO is now expanding into realms beyond the protein annotation community, for example the biodiversity and phenotype communities. As ECO continues to grow as a resource, we are seeking new users and new use cases, with the hope that ECO will continue to be a broadly used and easy-to-implement community standard for representing evidence in diverse biological applications. Feel free to visit two ECO-sponsored workshops at ICBO 2016 to learn more: 1. “An introduction to the Evidence and Conclusion Ontology and representing evidence in scientific research” and 2. “OBI-ECO Interactions & Evidence”.more » « less
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