Results
Title

Muscle Research and Gene Ontology: New standards for improved data integration.

Authors

Feltrin, Erika; Campanaro, Stefano; Diehl, Alexander D.; Ehler, Elisabeth; Faulkner, Georgine; Fordham, Jennifer; Gardin, Chiara; Harris, Midori; Hill, David; Knoell, Ralph; Laveder, Paolo; Mittempergher, Lorenza; Nori, Alessandra; Reggiani, Carlo; Sorrentino, Vincenzo; Volpe, Pompeo; Zara, Ivano; Valle, Giorgio; Clark, Jennifer Deegan née

Abstract

Background: The Gene Ontology Project provides structured controlled vocabularies for molecular biology that can be used for the functional annotation of genes and gene products. In a collaboration between the Gene Ontology (GO) Consortium and the muscle biology community, we have made largescale additions to the GO biological process and cellular component ontologies. The main focus of this ontology development work concerns skeletal muscle, with specific consideration given to the processes of muscle contraction, plasticity, development, and regeneration, and to the sarcomere and membranedelimited compartments. Our aims were to update the existing structure to reflect current knowledge, and to resolve, in an accommodating manner, the ambiguity in the language used by the community. Results: The updated muscle terminologies have been incorporated into the GO. There are now 159 new terms covering critical research areas, and 57 existing terms have been improved and reorganized to follow their usage in muscle literature. Conclusion: The revised GO structure should improve the interpretation of data from high-throughput (e.g. microarray and proteomic) experiments in the area of muscle science and muscle disease. We actively encourage community feedback on, and gene product annotation with these new terms. Please visit the Muscle Community Annotation Wiki http://wiki.geneontology.org/index.php/Muscle-Biology.

Subjects

GENES; ONTOLOGY; MUSCLES; PROTEOMICS; MOLECULAR biology; MUSCLE contraction; CONTRACTILITY (Biology); BIOMECHANICS

Publication

BMC Medical Genomics, 2009, Vol 2, p1

ISSN

1755-8794

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1186/1755-8794-2-6