CDAO stands for "Comparative Data Analysis Ontology" and it is an initial tentative to formalize the most current used terms for evolutionary analysis in a single framework.

As the wikipedia link says: "In both computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain. Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it."

As a group of professionals with distinct specializations in biology, evolution, computer science and semantics, we have intended to provide an ontological framework for comparative evolutionary analysis, including analysis of molecular sequence data as well as other types of data.

The CDAO is a scientific, open-source initiative. The source code in OWL (Web Ontology Language) was developed using Protégé software and its most recent version can be downloaded from SourceForge. Please, don't hesitate to contact us whether you miss some term in the ontology or if you have some comments/suggestions/criticisms about our work. Our e-mails are shown in the right tab.