Linking molecular function and biological process terms in the ontology for gene expression data analysis

Abstract

The gene ontology (GO) contains three hierarchies that represent gene function based on categories of molecular function, biological process, and cellular component. However, additional knowledge about the mechanisms underlying gene function is buried in the GO term definitions and is not computationally accessible. We describe a process for adding new links to the GO between molecular function terms and the biological process terms that those molecular functions are involved in. These new links enable inference engines to reason about relationships between genes that have disparate molecular functions but participate in the same biological process. In particular, we demonstrate how these new links enable more effective automated analysis of gene expression data.