Gene Ontology Consortium
Leading the Way in Ontology-based Communication for Biologists
The Cherry Lab has been a driving force in applying ontologies to bridge the communication gap between biologists and bioinformatic resources. As a founding member of the Gene Ontology (GO) Consortium since 1998, the lab has played a critical role in:
- Developing a standardized language for describing protein and RNA functions.
- Defining rigorous curation processes to ensure consistent and reproducible annotations.
- Educating researchers on the use and application of ontologies and annotations.
The GO Consortium has established and continues to refine three key ontologies: Biological Process, Molecular Function, and Cellular Component. These provide a unified vocabulary for describing genes and their products, fostering seamless communication across different bioinformatic resources. The widespread adoption of GO vocabularies has made it the gold standard for annotating molecular functions in biological research.
However, ensuring accurate and current annotations remains a constant challenge. The Cherry Lab, in collaboration with the GO Consortium, actively explores methods for verifying annotations through literature analysis. By focusing on reproducibility as the true measure of scientific quality, the lab aims to establish robust gold standard datasets for the benefit of the entire scientific community.
Funding:
- US National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute (grant U24 HG02273)
By pioneering the use of ontologies, the Cherry Lab continues to advance scientific communication and collaboration in the field of biology.