Gene Ontology Browser Help

The Gene Ontology Consortium encourages the use of a standardized nomenclature to refer to the Cellular Compartment, Biological Function, or Molecular Process descriptors that may apply to a protein. Entries in MiGenes are catalogued based on a list of 114 mitochondrial-specific GO terms, including both parent terms and subsidiary, or child, terms. The GO structure is a directed acyclic graph, with more than one route to a particular term, in contrast to a simple tree structure. We present a truncated mitochondrial-specific portion of this structure.

The Ontology Browse page looks like the following. The page is a pop-up window. Please close it when you don't need it.

To navigate through the Ontology, select the organism you are interested in, then expand the tree by clicking on the + signs adjacent to major terms until you find an appropriate term. The page will look like the following image.

When you click on an individual term, the browser lists protein records annotated by this term or one of its child terms. This search operates on the mitochondrial category only, and does not include proteins for which the evidence of mitochondrial location or function is equivocal.

An important caveat is that many GO term assignments are made by automated processes and can be unreliable. Also, most proteins are not annotated thoroughly for lower-level GO terms. Lists obtained by this procedure are no better than the current status of protein annotation.

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