Help:FAQ

Why is there no term for abolished X?

PATO has a quality named "abolished". We consider abolished to be the limit case of decreased. Use decreased X.

Why would you describe a complete loss as decreased X, which a child of X positive?

Example:

• decreased motility is a child of motile
• decreased catalase activity is a child of catalase activity

Why not use the non-X term, e.g. nonmotile or catalase negative

We use terms like nonmotile and catalase negative to annotate properties of a species, while decreased motility or decreased catalase activity are used for mutants where there is less of X than in the reference strain (wt or a parent), which is motile and catalase positive.

References

See Help:References for how to manage references in OMPwiki.