Team

Part of the Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Cellular Genomics Programme, the Cellular Semantics Team is dedicated to advancing knowledge in cell classification and understanding cellular diversity. We specialize in developing and curating the Cell Ontology (GitHub; Ontology Lookup Service; Tan et al., 2025) — a dynamic, structured vocabulary of cell types essential for accurate data integration and analysis in the life sciences.

Our team combines expertise in cell biology, bioinformatics, and ontology development to create precise and up-to-date definitions that support the growing fields of single-cell genomics, transcriptomics, neuroscience, and beyond. By collaborating with scientific experts worldwide, we ensure that the Cell Ontology remains a reliable resource for researchers looking to classify and analyze cellular data at scale. We are also major contributors to a suite of interconnected Open Biomedical Ontologies including the Uberon anatomy ontology.

Explore our work, meet the team, and learn how we’re making strides in cellular classification, supporting discoveries that bridge molecular data with biological meaning.

In addition to the Cell Onotogy, the team’s current projects include:

• Single Cell Knowledge Graph
• cxg-query-enhancer - an ontology expansion wrapper for queries of single cell transcriptomics data on CELLxGENE
• Cell Annotation Schema (CAS) - a LinkML schema supporting extended cell type annotation including recording evidence for cell type annotation.
• CAS-tools - Python library for generation of CAS from CELLxGENE h5ad files and Allen Brain Atlas taxonomies and interconversion between CAS and CAP Anndata format
• Stadndard ontology versions of Allen Brain Atlas developmental and adult brain anatomy ontologies: [HBA]; [DHBA]; [MBA]; [DMBA]

We also contribute to

• Uberon
• Ontology Development Kit
• Dead Simple OWL Design Patterns