Abstract
IMGT-ONTOLOGY is the ontology for immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. IMGT-ONTOLOGY, created to manage the complexity of immunogenetics knowledge, is the first ontology and global reference in the domain. IMGT-ONTOLOGY has been essential for the creation in 1989 of IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system® (http://www.imgt.org) (IMGT® Information System). IMGT-ONTOLOGY provides a semantic specification of the terms and relations to be used and a conceptualization of the knowledge in immunogenetics and immunoinformatics, allowing IMGT® to bridge biological and computational spheres in bioinformatics. IMGT-ONTOLOGY manages the immunogenetics knowledge through diverse facets that rely on the seven axioms of the Formal IMGT-ONTOLOGY or IMGT-Kaleidoscope: “IDENTIFICATION,” “DESCRIPTION,” “CLASSIFICATION,” “NUMEROTATION,” “LOCALIZATION,”...