# Uberon anatomy ontology and the Cell Ontology

Source: https://onco.cc/terms/uberon/  
OnCo record `uberon` (Term). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Uberon names anatomical structures (organs, tissues) and the Cell Ontology names cell types, each with a code, so that a tissue label or a cell-type annotation means the same thing across datasets.

## Summary

Uberon is a comparative anatomy ontology of animal structures such as lungs, muscles and bones, connected by relations such as part-of and develops-from (Wikipedia); the Cell Ontology captures the diversity of animal cell types and its identifiers annotate data at the cell-type level, for example in single-cell atlases (Wikipedia). CELLxGENE requires both, and OnCo's body-region and organ mappings play the same role informally.

## Fields

- Kind: Term
- Last checked: 2026-09-24
- Also known as: Uberon; UBERON; Uberon anatomy ontology; Cell Ontology; CL ontology; CL term; cell type ontology
- Tags: cansim-terms

## Notes

- Listed in the CanSim terms map 1.0.0 (docs/onco/terms.json, generated 2026-09-24), CC BY 4.0, attribution: CanSim project, an open, public-data-first cancer foundation-model programme; CanSim page path /terms/uberon.

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberon
- Wikipedia: Cell Ontology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Ontology
- OBO Foundry: Uberon: https://obofoundry.org/ontology/uberon.html
- OBO Foundry: Cell Ontology: https://obofoundry.org/ontology/cl.html
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberon

## Connected records

- collections: [CZ CELLxGENE / Human Cell Atlas](https://onco.cc/collections/cellxgene-hca/)
- terms: [Cancer AI vocabulary (CanSim terms map)](https://onco.cc/terms/cancer-ai-vocabulary/), [Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)](https://onco.cc/terms/hpo/), [Mondo disease ontology](https://onco.cc/terms/mondo/), [Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq, 10x Chromium)](https://onco.cc/terms/single-cell-rna-seq/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/uberon.json