From Gene Function to Physiological Model via Gene Ontology

Designing ontology to represent gene function is of vital importance for meeting the major challenge of integrating sequence data with the increasing amount of data from functional analyses of genes. Given that genes are expressed in temporally and spatially characteristic patterns, their products quite often reside in specific cellular compartments and may be part of one or more multi-component complexes. Genes may have more than one product and the products are functionally distinct. Knowing that gene products possess one or more biochemical, physiological or structural functions, the group strives to adopt an overall strategy using contemporary management of relevant biological data in order to see into how an ontology-based gene function may be implemented and, consequently, lead toward physiological model.