Uberon

Uberon is an integrated, cross-species anatomy ontology covering animals and their anatomical structures. It provides the anatomical backbone that anchors cell types (via the Cell Ontology), gene expression, and phenotype data to a common, comparative framework — enabling reasoning and data integration across species and resources.

We are major contributors to Uberon, with a particular focus on the anatomy needed to support brain cell atlases and whole-body reference atlases.

Explore: GitHub · Ontology Lookup Service

Aims#

We are extending Uberon to include terms and structures from:

• The community — responding to and integrating anatomy term requests from across the Uberon user community.
• HuBMAP Human Reference Atlas (HRA) — anatomical structures underpinning the reference atlas of the healthy human body.
• Allen Brain Atlas anatomies — ontologising and Uberon-mapping the Allen Institute brain StructureGraphs. These are maintained as standard OBO ontologies on the brain-bican organisation:
  • Developing Human Brain Atlas ontology (DHBA)
  • Human Brain Atlas ontology (HBA)
  • Mouse Brain Atlas ontology (MBA)
  • Harmonized Ontology of Mammalian Brain Anatomy (HOMBA) — harmonises mammalian brain anatomy across species and atlases.
• Human Developmental Cell Atlas — anatomical structures and developmental niches.