Chunk #49 — 4. ACHIEVING A SYSTEMS-BASED APPROACH TO STUDYING AD — 4.4 Interpreting Systems-based Analysis of AD: The Need for Alcohol-focused Ontologies
stressors (i.e., the extra-hypothalamic corticotrophin releasing factor system; Merlo Pich et al., 1995). Formalizing an ontology of AD (including all of its different domains) will help to organize and communicate all of the important risk and protective factors and phenotypes into a structured representation. In addition, ontologies of AD (global or focused on a particular domain of AD (stress circuits and AD)) can serve as a base for exploration in future research. More specifically, researchers will be able to design computational models that explore variation across multiple domains (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, etc.) and levels (e.g., cell, tissue, behavior) of the system.
