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Gene
Ontology (GO) project
•Purpose:
1) Define
controlled terms (ontologies) for description of gene products from 3 aspects:
•Biological process (DNA repair, mitosis)
•Molecular function (protein
serine/threonine kinase activity,
transcription factor
activity)
•Cellular component (nucleus, ribosome)
2) Establish a unified framework for
organism-independent gene annotation
•Characteristics:
1) A gene can
have multiple associations in each ontology
2) GO terms are
organized in hierarchical structures called directed acyclic graphs (DAGs)
- The
most general classifications are at top levels of the graph
- More
specialized classifications at lower levels