It's a big graph, from graph theory. Think of a bunch of words connected to each other by lines ("edges") where the lines are some kind of causal link (e.g. bot

It's a big graph, from graph theory. Think of a bunch of words connected to each other by lines ("edges") where the lines are some kind of causal link (e.g. both involved in processing sugars). It's basically organised like an XML file or JSON. The ontologies are actually quite small to download (46kb for the gene ontology). You can go look at one here [0] The idea of the ontologies is to use the same words for the same things, and have a kind of summary for all the research into the things listed in the ontology. Having this all standardised allows for a lot of interoperability. Big problems with the ontologies is they are years out of date and have poor uptake in many parts of life science research. Which is shame because they are a fantastic fundamental tool, it's just that the life scientists are underfunded and already work ridiculous hours. 0. http://geneontology.org/docs/download-ontology/#go_obo_and_owl http://geneontology.org/docs/download-ontology/#go_obo_and_o...