GO — Gene Ontology
Overview
The Gene Ontology is a controlled vocabulary for describing gene product attributes across all organisms, developed by the Gene Ontology Consortium since 1998. It is organised into three independent ontologies covering biological processes, molecular functions, and cellular components. GO terms are used to annotate gene products in databases worldwide, enabling systematic cross-species functional analysis of genomic and transcriptomic data.
Three Ontology Domains
- Biological Process (BP) covers the larger biological processes accomplished by multiple molecular activities (e.g. synaptic transmission, myelination, axon guidance).
- Molecular Function (MF) covers the biochemical activities of individual gene products (e.g. kinase activity, ion channel activity, receptor binding).
- Cellular Component (CC) covers the locations where a gene product is active (e.g. synapse, mitochondrion, nucleus).
Connections
- Cross-references: ChEBI (chemical entity identifiers in molecular function and process terms)
- Part of: OBO Foundry
Resources
- https://geneontology.org
- https://amigo.geneontology.org (AmiGO browser)
- https://www.ebi.ac.uk/QuickGO (QuickGO browser, EBI)
- https://obofoundry.org/ontology/go.html (OBO Foundry entry)
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06424-z (Gene Ontology Consortium 2023, Nature)
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-14-513 (Hastings et al. 2013, BMC Genomics, GO-ChEBI integration)