Constructing a Lattice of Infectious Disease Ontologies from a Staphylococcus aureus Isolate Repository

A repository of clinically associated Staphylococcus aureus (Sa) iso‐ lates is used to semi‐automatically generate a set of application ontolo‐ gies for specific subfamilies of Sa‐related disease. Each such applica‐ tion ontology is compatible with the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) and uses resources from the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Found‐ ry. The set of application ontologies forms a lattice structure beneath the IDO‐Core and IDO‐extension reference ontologies. We show how this lattice can be used to define a strategy for the construction of a new taxonomy of infectious disease incorporating genetic, molecular, and clinical data. We also outline how faceted browsing and query of annotated data is supported using a lattice application ontology.