A new measure for functional similarity of gene products based on Gene Ontology

Background: Gene Ontology (GO) is a standard vocabulary of functional terms and allows for coherent annotation of gene products. These annotations provide a basis for new methods that compare gene products regarding their molecular function and biological role. Results: We present a new method for comparing sets of GO terms and for assessing the functional similarity of gene products. The method relies on two semantic similarity measures; simRel and funSim. One measure (simRel) is applied in the comparison of the biological processes found in different groups of organisms. The other measure (funSim) is used to find functionally related gene products within the same or between different genomes. Results indicate that the method, in addition to being in good agreement with established sequence similarity approaches, also provides a means for the identification of functionally related proteins independent of evolutionary relationships. The method is also applied to estimating functional ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Andreas Schlicker, Francisco S. Domingues, Jörg Rahnenführer, Thomas Lengauer
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Gene Products, Proteins, Related Gene Products