Composite annotations: Requirements for mapping multiscale data and models to biomedical ontologies

Current methods for annotating biomedical data resources rely on simple mappings between data elements and the contents of a variety of biomedical ontologies and controlled vocabularies. Here we point out that such simple mappings are inadequate for large-scale multiscale, multidomain integrative ldquovirtual humanrdquo projects. For such integrative challenges, we describe a ldquocomposite annotationrdquo schema that is simple yet sufficiently extensible for mapping the biomedical content of a variety of data sources and biosimulation models to available biomedical ontologies.