Conceptual Models of Energy Transfer and Regulation

Abstract

Biological processes can be expressed from multiple perspectives. One basic perspective involves specifying the process steps, how they are ordered, their participants, and how participants are involved in different steps. Two additional perspectives on processes are how energy is transferred and how the processes are regulated. Such perspectives are essential for understanding the basic mechanisms of biology. We consider a representation of energy transfer and regulation for biological processes, and consider several example questions that can be answered using this representation. Our work is driven by the description of processes in an introductory biology textbook and provides the ontology design for an education application.