Design principle #5
Delegated axes / Scope boundary
ONGA describes what a genomic file's content is. Some qualifiers
that appear baked into ENCODE
output_type terms are
not content properties — they describe the biological sample or
the assay/method that produced the file. ONGA deliberately keeps these
out of scope and delegates them to external
ontologies and modules, rather than absorbing them into its content vocabularies.
Unlike lossless faceting inside ONGA (a compound content term = base +
ONGA facets), these are scope ejections: the qualifier names a
property that belongs to another ontology.
Anatomy / tissue
Delegated to UBERON
(biospecimen organism_part).
Sample sex
Delegated to PATO — distinct from reference build sex.
Assay / method
Assay and method names are out of ONGA's content scope and delegated to external assay ontologies.
Current delegations
3 compound content terms ejected to external ontologies. Each removed term is recoverable as content base + delegated axis:value.
| Removed term | Content base | Delegated axis | Value | External term |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| predicted forebrain enhancers | predicted enhancers | organism_part | forebrain | UBERON:0001890 |
| predicted heart enhancers | predicted enhancers | organism_part | heart | UBERON:0000948 |
| predicted whole brain enhancers | predicted enhancers | organism_part | brain | UBERON:0000955 |