Gene Ontology: A Resource for Analysis and Interpretation of Alzheimer’s Disease Data

ABSTRACT                                                

Gene Ontology (GO) is a universal resource for analyses and interpretation of high-throughput biological datasets. GO is developed and curated by several different groups, based at scientific institutions around the world, working together under the auspices of the GO Consortium. GO annotations capture biological functional knowledge by associating gene products with GO terms. GO term and gene product records all have computer-readable accession numbers; therefore, these annotations can be easily used for analyses of large datasets while retaining human-readable labels. The UCL Functional Gene Annotation group focuses on GO annotation of human gene products. Our group has led initiatives to systematically annotate proteins and microRNAs across specific biomedical fields, and our current biocuration effort, funded by the Alzheimer’s Research UK foundation, is focused on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Our group has also contributed to the development and revision of the ontology describing neurological domains of biology. Here we present an overview of GO and explain how our work, as well as the work of other members of the GO Consortium, is improving the neurological domains of the GO resource. These biocuration efforts will benefit the dementia and Alzheimer’s research community by rendering GO more suitable for analyses of neurological datasets.