Lexicon · Tools and roadmap
Interactional ontology
Fully specified name: Interactional ontology (concept)
The proposed NucLex representation of interactions as explicit objects with participants, context, and evidence.
- Scope note
- A project design direction rather than an implemented standard.
- 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
Most ontologies describe things and the relationships between them as labeled links: this ligand binds that receptor, this radionuclide is a component of that agent. A link of that kind is a single assertion with no room for the conditions under which it holds, how strongly, or on what evidence. Interactional ontology is the NucLex proposal to make the interaction itself a first-class object. An interaction record names its participants and their roles, the context in which it was observed (biological system, method, conditions, time), any parameters that characterize it (an affinity, a rate), the uncertainty of those parameters, and the evidence and provenance behind the whole.
The motivation is practical. A physician asking whether a target is reachable, a radiochemist comparing two labeled molecules, and a modeler assembling a compartment model all need the same interaction facts, but with different qualifiers attached. A bare link serves none of them well. An interaction object can carry all the qualifiers and still be reduced to a simple link when a simple view is wanted.
Related ideas exist elsewhere: reified relationships in knowledge graphs, event-centered models in biology, and reaction records in model exchange formats. NucLex does not claim priority over these.
This is a design direction, not an implemented standard. No NucLex interaction schema has been released, and the term describes the project's proposal unless a cited external use is named.