Patent ID: 7865534

Claim:
A computer system for storing life science information in a database, the computer system comprising: a processor; an electronic database storage module for storing in the database a library of machine-readable symbolic representations into which life science knowledge is adapted to be encoded according to a life sciences ontology, each machine-readable symbolic representation comprising: at least two unspecified object identifiers; a relationship connector, wherein the relationship connector relates two of the at least two object identifiers to each other based on a casual relationship between the object identifiers; and constraint information that defines which connections among the object identifiers are permitted so that life sciences knowledge encoded into the machine-readable symbolic representation is semantically rigorous and based on the life sciences ontology; and a graphical user interface for managing addition of new life sciences data to a database, the graphical user interface comprising: a display screen that receives an input selecting one of the machine-readable symbolic representations as a template to represent the new data based at least in part on the life science ontology; the graphical user interface restricting input of any data element that does not conform to the constraint information associated with the selected machine-readable symbolic representation such that the semantically rigorous relationships for the life sciences ontology are maintained; the graphical user interface receiving input of at least one data element that conforms to the constraint information to instantiate the machine-readable symbolic representation.