Gene Ontology

The Gene Ontology, or GO, is a major bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species. More specifically, the project aims to:

1. Maintain and develop its controlled vocabulary of gene and gene product attributes;
2. Annotate genes and gene products, and assimilate and disseminate annotation data;
3. Provide tools for easy access to all aspects of the data provided by the project.

The GO is part of a larger classification effort, the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO).