Goat: the Gene Ontology Annotation Tool

The Gene Ontology (GO), a structured controlled vocabulary of over 15,000 terms, is becoming the de facto standard for describing gene products in terms of their molecular functions, biological processes in which they participate, and the cellular locations in which they are active. However, current annotation editors do not constrain the choice of GO terms users may enter, potentially resulting in inconsistent or even nonsensical descriptions of gene products. Relying upon a DAML+OIL version of GO, including mined GO-term-to-gene-product-type and GO-term-to-GO-term associations, and the FaCT reasoner, GOAT aims to guide the user in the annotation of gene products with GO terms by displaying those field values that are appropriate based on previously entered terms. This will result in annotations of a higher quality, which in turn will facilitate biomedical e-Science.