ABOUT
UberVariO is a generic ontology of biological heterogeneity at all levels from subatomic movements to planet-wide biosphere variations. It has been manually curated based on the literature and electronic information sources.
Understanding and consideration of heterogeneity is important in many ways.
Benefits of the usage of UberVariO include
- improved communication between and within scientific fields
- cross-disciplinary collaboration
- consistent, unequivocal, and systematic terminology
- common concepts and definitions throughout disciplines
- covers all biosciences
- easy and detailed data integration
- multidisciplinary data analysis
- facilitates computational reasoning
- efficient data sharing
- systematic metadata descriptions
- reuse
- reproducibility of experiments
Poikilosis
Poikilosis is a new unifying scientific theory based on the comprehension of pervasive heterogeneity in all biological systems, processes, entities, etc. Poikilosis is typically thought to be noise; however, it is, in addition to systematic and random error, the third component of measurement variation. Often, the most important one.
Consideration of poikilosis affects
Here is a popular science introduction to poikilosis.
Scientific articles about poikilosis include
- introduction: F1000Research
- measurement, data analysis, experimental design, statistics etc.: FASEB
- a novel model for biological regulation: Hum Mutat
- pathogenicity model: Hum Mutat
- individual genetic heterogeneity: Genes
- definition and types of protein functional effects: Biochimie
- lagom, one concept related to poikilosis: Biological Theory
Annotation with UberVariO
UberVariO is intended to be used like other ontologies to systematically describe biological entities and processes. There is currently no automated annotation tool. It would be difficult to implement such a tool to cover the entire ontology. More specific methods for certain branches of UberVariO would be more feasible to implement.
If you develop such an application, please let me know, and I will be happy to add a link here.
Each UberVariO concept has a label and a unique identifier for annotating.
Citing UberVariO
A manuscript describing UberVariO has been submitted. In the meantime, cite the URL http://variationontology.org/UberVariO.
Suggest a new term
You are welcome to contribute to UberVariO's development. I would be glad to receive comments, suggestions for improvement, experiences with the use of the ontology, and other feedback. Please mail to me at mauno.vihinen@med.lu.se. Please, include references that support your suggestion.
License
UberVariO is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License.
I ask that when using or citing UberVariO, the release be mentioned and the ontology be cited.
UberVariO logo
If you intend to use the logo on your website, please include a link to the UberVariO home page, https://variationontology.org/UberVariO. The logo is subject to our use and license.
Website disclaimer
All information on this website is copyright © 2026 UberVariO. Permission to use the information contained in this database was given by the developer. Users of the data are solely responsible for compliance with any copyright restrictions. Documents from this server are provided "AS-IS" without any warranty, expressed or implied.