Mapping of change operations from gene ontology into medical subject headings

Concept mapping between two different ontologies in the biomedical field are commonly conducted. When one of the ontologies changes, the changes should be propagated to the other ontology in the mapping. This propagation process is an issue that must be addressed because the knowledge in biomedical field develops rapidly. In this paper, we present the change propagation method from Gene Ontology (GO) to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). The change propagation is conducted by mapping GO change operations into MeSH change operations. There are three steps that must be performed. Firstly, the change operations on each ontology are identified and represented formally. Secondly, change operations in both ontologies are classified and compared. Finally, each GO change operation is mapped into a MeSH change operation based on the semantic meaning of the change operation. A proof of concept is also presented to show how the process works. In the experiment, the method has been applied to ten concept deletion operations of GO, with 80 of operations being successfully propagated to MeSH. The 100 success cannot be achieved because some GO concepts do not have relevant corresponding MeSH concepts due to the specificity of GO concepts. © 2020, Intelligent Network and Systems Society.