A Visual Web Query System for NeuronBank Ontology

Ontologies have recently been heavily developed in the life sciences. Scientists retrieve life science ontologies and references to them (e.g. annotations) for aiding their research. As users usually have little or no knowledge about the query languages such as Algernon or SPARQL to access these ontologies, designing flexible and powerful Web query interfaces will make this information more accessible. In this paper we describe a Web query system for NeuronBank 1 , a web-based tool for cataloging, searching, and analyzing neuronal circuitry within and across species. Information from a single species is represented in an individual branch of NeuronBank. We aim to assist users in searching within a branch or perform queries across branches to look for similarities in neuronal circuits across species. The query interface ideas are general enough that they can be adapted to work with other ontologies.