Modelling the EGFR through the Protein Conformation Ontology

The study of the spatial configuration of the structures of a protein, also known as protein conformation, is pivotal to the understanding of the functioning and activation patterns of proteins, as well as their relations with the surrounding environment. In order to facilitate data-driven research on protein conformations, we present the Protein Conformation Ontology, an ongoing project which provides a structured vocabulary of terms used to represent protein conformations and related conformational changes at different levels of granularity. To the aim of testing the capabilities of the ontology, we adopted as a test case the conformational changes related to the activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor. In this paper, we discuss our initial results in modelling two different models of the epidermal growth factor receptor.