Gene Ontology (GO)
The Gene Ontology Consortium (The Gene Ontology Consortium, 2012) is a model for the development of an epilepsy ontology which can drive the subsequent development of epilepsy informatics infrastructures. Funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute, the project has three structured ontological components that describe gene products in terms of their 1) associated biological processes, 2) cellular components and 3) molecular functions in a species-independent manner.
The project effort itself has three aspects:
- first, the development and maintenance of the ontologies themselves;
- second, the annotation of gene products, which entails making associations between the ontologies and the genes and gene products in the collaborating databases; and
- third, development of tools that facilitate the creation, maintenance and use of ontologies.
An attractive and innovative feature of the Consortium’s model which is likely to be highly relevant to the epilepsy field is the open and interactive nature of the project where comments and suggestions are solicited for incorporation.
