Monitoring the evolutionary aspect of the Gene Ontology to enhance predictability and usability

Background: Much effort is currently made to develop the Gene Ontology (GO). Due to the dynamic nature of information it addresses, GO undergoes constant updates whose results are released at regular intervals as separate versions. Although there are a large number of computational tools to aid the development of GO, they are operating on a particular version of GO, making it difficult for GO curators to anticipate the full impact of particular changes along the time axis on a larger scale. We present a method for tapping into such an evolutionary aspect of GO, by making it possible to keep track of important temporal changes to any of the terms and relations of GO and by consequently making it possible to recognize associated trends. Results: We have developed visualization methods for viewing the changes between two different versions of GO by constructing a colour-coded layered graph. The graph shows both versions of GO with highlights to those GO terms that are added, removed and ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Jong C. Park, Tak-eun Kim, Jinah Park
• Keywords: BMCBI 2008, Evolutionary Aspect, Important Temporal Changes, Specific Go Term