The Gene Ontology (GO) database and informatics resource

TLDR

The Gene Ontology (GO) project supplies freely available, structured vocabularies and classifications covering molecular and cellular biology, which are integrated into the GO database and widely used by model organism databases and genome annotation groups. Members of the GO Consortium continually collaborate, involving outside experts as needed, to expand and update the GO vocabularies.

Abstract

The Gene Ontology (GO) project (http://www. geneontology.org/) provides structured, controlled vocabularies and classifications that cover several domains of molecular and cellular biology and are freely available for community use in the annotation of genes, gene products and sequences. Many model organism databases and genome annotation groups use the GO and contribute their annotation sets to the GO resource. The GO database integrates the vocabularies and contributed annotations and provides full access to this information in several formats. Members of the GO Consortium continually work collectively, involving outside experts as needed, to expand and update the GO vocabularies. The GO Web resource also provides access to extensive documentation about the GO project and links to applications that use GO data for functional analyses.