Lexicon · Tools and roadmap
Interaction
Fully specified name: Interaction (concept)
A process or relationship in which participating entities affect one another under stated conditions.
- Scope note
- Record participants, direction where appropriate, and evidence.
- Synonyms
- None recorded as true synonyms in this context.
- Monograph
- Interactional ontology (draft)
- External mappings
- None recorded. In W0 no mapping to SNOMED CT® or any external authority is asserted for this entry. A future mapping record will carry source system, identifier, version, relation type, evidence, author, confidence where meaningful, and review state.
- Formal status
- Editorial entry only. It is not part of any released ontology and a prose edit here changes no formal definition.
Draft. This entry is an unreviewed draft. Its sources have not been checked by a named person and no domain reviewer has approved it. Treat every claim as provisional.
Notes
An interaction is something that happens between two or more entities such that each affects the other. In molecular biology the paradigm case is binding: a ligand and a receptor, an enzyme and its substrate, an antibody and its antigen. In pharmacology the word also names drug-drug interactions, where one agent changes the exposure or effect of another. In physics it names the deposition of energy by radiation in matter. In clinical informatics it may name an encounter between a patient and a service. These uses share a shape, participants affecting one another, but little else.
The ontology distinguishes an interaction from a relationship. A relationship is a stated connection between concepts, such as "is a" or "part of," and is usually timeless. An interaction is a process or an event-like relationship: it has participants with roles, it occurs in a context, and it may have a direction, a rate, a strength, and a duration. "Binds" as a relationship type says that binding is possible; a binding interaction record says that it was observed, where, how, and how strongly.
For NucLex an interaction record carries at minimum its participants and their roles, its direction where that is meaningful, its context, and the evidence on which it rests. Parameters and uncertainty attach to the record rather than to either participant. This is the unit that interactional ontology proposes to make explicit.