The GO provides core biological knowledge representation for modern biologists, whether computationally or experimentally based. GO resources include biomedical ontologies that cover molecular domains of all life forms as well as extensive compilations of gene product annotations to these ontologies that provide largely species-neutral, comprehensive statements about what gene products do. Although extensively used in data analysis workflows, and widely incorporated into numerous data analysis platforms and applications, the general user of GO resources often misses fundamental distinctions about GO structures, GO annotations, and what can and can not be extrapolated from GO resources. Here are ten quick tips for using the Gene Ontology.

Read "Ten Quick Tips for Using the Gene Ontology" at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003343

Following are the most commonly used old and new GO term enrichment determination tools. These tools are recommended to people working in a wet-lab.

CLASSIFI (Department of Pathology, UT Southwestern Medical Center)

CLASSIFI (Cluster Assignment for Biological Inference) is a data-mining tool that can be used to identify significant co-clustering of genes with similar functional properties (e.g. cellular response to DNA damage). Briefly, CLASSIFI uses the Gene OntologyTM (GO) gene annotation scheme to define the functional properties of all genes/probes in a microarray data set, and then applies a cumulative hypergeometric distribution analysis to determine if any statistically significant gene ontology co-clustering has occurred.

http://pathcuric1.swmed.edu/pathdb/classifi.html

EasyGO (China Agricultural University)

EasyGO is designed to automate enrichment job for experimental biologists to identify enriched Gene Ontology (GO) terms in a list of microarray probe sets or gene identifiers (with expression information for PAGE analysis). Also EasyGO is also a GO annotation database, especially focus on agronomical species, supporting 30 species. It is user friendly, with advanced result browsing format and in-time update.

http://bioinformatics.cau.edu.cn/neweasygo/

http://bioinformatics.cau.edu.cn/easygo/

g:GOSt (Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu)

g:GOSt retrieves most significant Gene Ontology (GO) terms, KEGG and REACTOME pathways, and TRANSFAC motifs to a user-specified group of genes, proteins or microarray probes. g:GOSt also allows analysis of ranked or ordered lists of genes, visual browsing of GO graph structure, interactive visualisation of retrieved results, and many other features. Multiple testing corrections are applied to extract only statistically important results.

http://biit.cs.ut.ee/gprofiler/

DAVID : Gene Functional Classification (Laboratory of Immunopathogenesis and Bioinformatics, NIAID)

The Functional Classification Tool provides a rapid means to organize large lists of genes into functionally related groups to help unravel the biological content captured by high throughput technologies.

http://david.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/gene2gene.jsp

http://david.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/

API https://github.com/chrisamiller/davidapi

GOEAST (Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

GOEAST is web based software toolkit providing easy to use, visualizable, comprehensive and unbiased Gene Ontology (GO) analysis for high-throughput experimental results, especially for results from microarray hybridization experiments. The main function of GOEAST is to identify significantly enriched GO terms among give lists of genes using accurate statistical methods.

http://omicslab.genetics.ac.cn/GOEAST/

GOstat (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)

Find statistically overrepresented GO terms within a group of genes

http://gostat.wehi.edu.au/

GOrilla (Technion - Laboratory of Computational Biology , Israel Institute of Technology)

GOrilla is a tool for identifying and visualizing enriched GO terms in ranked lists of genes.
It uses two approaches, first by searching for enriched GO terms that appear densely at the top of a ranked list of genes  or by searching for enriched GO terms in a target list of genes compared to a background list of genes.

GOrilla makes nice pictures !!!!

http://cbl-gorilla.cs.technion.ac.il/

Gene Ontology for Functional Analysis (GOFFA)

GOFFA is a tool developed for ArrayTrack™ that takes a list of genes and identifies terms in Gene Ontology (GO) disclaimer icon associated with those genes.

It provides several tools to view/access the GO term hierarchy, full listing of GO terms annotated with the genes associated with a given term with statically useful report.

http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/BioinformaticsTools/ucm233315.htm

GOAT (The University of Manchester)

The aim of the GOAT project is to create an application that will guide users, especially biomedical researchers, in the annotation of gene products with terms from the Gene Ontology.

http://goat.man.ac.uk/

Script https://github.com/tanghaibao/goatools/

REVIGO ( Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Croatia)

REViGO is a web server that can take long lists of Gene Ontology terms and summarize them by removing redundant GO terms. The remaining terms can be visualized in semantic similarity-based scatterplots, interactive graphs, or tag clouds.

http://revigo.irb.hr/

QuickGo (EMBL-EBI Institute)

It uses extensive computational filters to allow the generation of specific subsets of GO annotations, mapped to sequence identifiers of your choice. Then GO slims are used which is collective list of GO full set of terms available from the Gene Ontology project.

http://www.ebi.ac.uk/QuickGO/

GOLEM

An interactive graph-based gene-ontology navigation and analysis tool. GOLEM is a userful tool which allows the viewer to navigate and explore a local portion of the Gene Ontology (GO) hierarchy.

http://reducio.princeton.edu/GOLEM/

BGI Web Gene Ontology (WEGO) Annotation Plot (Beijing Genomics Institute)

WEGO () is a useful tool for plotting GO annotation results. It has been widely used in many important biological research projects, such as the rice genome project [Yu, J. et al. Science 296, 79-92 (2002); Yu, J. et al. PLoS Biol 3, e38 (2005)] and the silkworm genome project [Xia, Q. et al. Science 306, 1937-40 (2004)]. It has become one of the daily tools for downstream gene annotation analysis, especially when performing comparative genomics tasks. WEGO along with two other tools, namely External to GO Query and GO Archive Query, are freely available for all users. Any suggestions are welcome at wego@genomics.org.cn. Here is a sample output generated by WEGO

http://wego.genomics.org.cn/cgi-bin/wego/index.pl

GeneGO MetaCore (MIT)

GeneGo is a leading provider of data mining & analysis solutions in systems biology. MetaCore, GeneGo's flapship product, is an integrated software suite for functional analysis of experimental data. MetaCore is based on a curated database of human protein-protein, protein-DNA interactions, transcription factors, signaling and metabolic pathways, disease and toxicity, and the effects of bioactive molecules.

https://portal.genego.com/

GOEx (Stony Brook University)

GOEx facilitates organism-specific studies by leveraging GO and providing a rich graphical user interface. It is a simple to use tool, specialized for biologists who wish to analyze spectral counting data from shotgun proteomics.

http://pcarvalho.com/patternlab

GOssTo

GOssTo and GOssToWeb are tools to calculate the semantic similarity between genes or terms in the Gene Ontology.

http://www.paccanarolab.org/gosstoweb/

GO Workbench

The Gene Ontology Analysis Viewer allows direct browsing of the Gene Ontology, and also the visualization of GO Term analysis results.

http://wiki.c2b2.columbia.edu/workbench/index.php/Gene_Ontology_Viewer

Some other useful list of GO software and tools is available at http://www.geneontology.org/GO.tools.shtml#browser

Yet another useful webpage with list of GO tools at http://neurolex.org/wiki/Category:Resource:Gene_Ontology_Tools

WALK IN INTERVIEW

A walk-in Interview for the following position tenable at the Bioinformatics Infrastructure Facility (BIF), Department of Biotechnology, Alagappa University will be held at the Department of Biotechnology, Alagappa University, Karaikudi 630 003 on 15.05.2014 (Thursday) at 01:00 PM. This national facility is funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi. The main objectives of the Centre involve teaching and research activities in bioinformatics/biotechnology.

RA (One Post):

Salary : Rs. 11000 p.m. plus admissible HRA

Qualification: M.Sc., in Bioinformatics/Biotechnology/Biophysics/Biochemistry/ Life Sciences

Interested candidates are encouraged to send their Curriculum Vitae by email to “sk_pandian@rediffmail.com” in advance. On the day of interview, the candidates must produce original certificates in proof of their educational qualification and experience and a recommendation letter from the Head of the Department/Institution where last studied/worked. Candidates who have already passed the required Degree alone are eligible to appear for interview. No TA&DA will be given for attending the interview.

Advertisement: http://www.alagappabiotech.org/Walk%20in%20interview.pdf

http://millslab.org/research.html

http://molbiol-tools.ca/Convert.htm

Address of the bookmark: http://molbiol-tools.ca/Convert.htm

Dr Altan Kara is a Bioinformatics specialist at the faculty of Gene Engineering and Biotechnology Institute at TUBITAK MAM Research Center. His research interest revolves around the cancer informatics and computational aided-drug design. I applaud Dr Altan for clearly setting out both his expectations of people that join his lab/university in addition to listing his responsibilities to his research members at TUBITAK MAM Research Institüte. Hopefully, this interview will prove useful to others in the field, especially to those who are just starting their bioinformatics careers.

You can find out more about Dr Altan by visiting his (well documented) lab page (http://gmbe.mam.tubitak.gov.tr/en) and BOL page http://bioinformaticsonline.com/profile/altan . And now, on to the BOL:“Tryst with a Bioinformatician” interview series ...

• What push you to join Computational Biology/Bioinformatics?

According to me, bioinformatics is the center of modern biological research and if a researcher wants to discover new biological insights by evaluating the globally produced biological data to derivate unified solutions for specific biological problems, learning bioinformatics is the only way to achieve this goal.

• What fascinates you about Computational Biology/Bioinformatics?

It's flexibility. As well known, there are highly diverse and complex biological questions are waiting to be enlightened and it's impossible to bring solutions to this diversity by using similar approaches. Thus, the employed method has to be unique for the targeted biological problem and by using bioinformatics tools this can be easily achieved. 

• What is the one word you would use to describe yourself?

Bioinformatician. :)

• Can you please describe your research work in a nutshell for BOL users.

At my current Institute, I am working in the field of cancer bioinformatics. Briefly, the overall aim of the project which I am working for (AKMARK (Project CODE:5153403)) is, applying a bioinformatics-supported genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome analysis to reveal the molecular profile of the disease through an integrated approach, and to develop an early diagnosis and scanning kit based on this profile. Alterations in the gene, transcript, protein, and metabolite profiles between normal tissue, normal tissue adjoined to the tumor (reactive stroma), tumor tissue, lymph node metastasis, and blood samples taken from the same patient and the reflection of these changes in some other selected body fluids will be revealed within the scope of the project. The molecular structures involved in the development and progression of NSCLC will be determined and relations with the clinical, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging and histology will be made. The development of a diagnostic kit for immediate clinical purposes and an electrochemical biosensor for quick on-site applications are targeted through the development of a number of antibody and aptamer formed against the most specific biomarker selected from the panel.

• Is there anything else we should know about you and your research?

Besides AKMARK, I am also in preparation of having a side project that aims for the development of a computational method to design inhibitors for prokaryotic two-component systems. In this project, I will be in collaboration with Prof. Maria Kontoyianni, SIUE: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, School of Pharmacy.

• What was your greatest scientific disappointment in life till now?

So far I do not experience any memorable scientific disappointment in my life. :)

• What major research challenges and problems did you face yet? How did you handle them?

The major challenge which I faced so far in my scientific career was predicting the interaction between the prokaryotic two-component proteins. To be able to accurately predict the interactions between these proteins, I create a meta-predictor by using a support vector machine. By using this technique I integrated six different protein-protein interaction methods in a way to cover disadvantage of one method with the advantage of another one. The meta-predictor which I developed during this work is accessible via http://metapred2cs.ibers.aber.ac.uk/ and for more detailed information about the system the articles with the PMID IDs; PMID: 27378293 and PMID: 26384938 can be read.

• What's your all-time favourite bioinformatics package, and why?

For me, the best bioinformatics package is R/Bioconductor. The reason why I like this package is, it provides lots of useful tools for comprehensive analysis and comparison of high-throughput experimental data in an integrated manner and besides lots of the packages it provides, it is open source and also open for development. As a result, it provides strong and flexible ways to do science.

• In bioinformatics, do you see yourself in which of the following roles-scientist, analyst, developer, engineer or pure academician?

Scientist / Developer.

• What will you like to accomplish in next five years / ten years?

For my current research, I would like to design a pipeline to automatically integrate and analyse omics data for cancer research which will be specifically aiming for biomarker and novel drug target discovery. In addition to this, I also like to develop another pipeline for prokaryotic TCS protein structure prediction and inhibitor design.

• When you will be retired, what would you tell next generation bioinformaticians?

Bioinformatics is not all about scripting and researchers who study in this field should never expect a tool to do their analyses for them. Besides computational skills, a bioinformatician must have a strong biological background in his/her research area which will allow them to understand if anything went wrong during their run by only looking at the results instead of just blindly trusting the output of the bioinformatics tools.

• What you always miss in bioinformatics when you will no longer working in this field?

Bioinformatics is open to doing multi-discipliner research with scientists all around the world. As a result, while I studying in this field I can interactively learn a lot from wide range research community. I think this is the one thing which I will miss the most.

• If there will be bioinformatics company owned by you in future, What are your company focus and aim?

With the increasing amount of data in databases, there is already a massive need for effective methods to eliminate the manipulated data and reach to clean/useful information. As days pass, the requirement of data mining will be the first step of any research project. For this reason, the major goal of my bioinformatics company will be developing effective tools to eliminate manipulated datasets and information that exist in the literature and provide trustworthy clean information/datasets for researchers.

• How much bioinformatics change in 2050, according to your wild imagination?

Bioinformatics is a field that constantly and dynamically changes. As the bioinformatics progress, new tools and methods become available and they provide a better application of existing methods or totally new methods that offer an alternative solution to various biological problems. A long with these updates, developers also provide easy to use GUIs for most of the tools. Considering this, if the field carries on developing like this, every single researcher with a strong biological background can be able to perform bioinformatics analyses by him/herself without needing a professional help. As a result, almost all of the bioinformaticians will be responsible just for development of new methods/tools.

• What would one piece of advice you give someone who's trying to reinvent themselves and enter into bioinformatics sector?

Bioinformatics is a wide field with a lot of career options. Thus, if a researcher likes to step into this field first he/she should be clear about the branch of the bioinformatics they like to study in. Following to this decision they should first learn at least one programing language and investigate the ways of how other researcher employed that language in their researches and WHY? A researcher, in this field, should never create and use copy paste scripts but always must understand WHY the other researcher worked in that way. Knowing the answer of this question is the only way to learn bioinformatics. Besides, a researcher in the field of bioinformatics (from any branch) must always be good about the environmental control. In other words, one should always easily control input output directories, modify files or directories, annotate and modify employed scripts during the research and should not allow any confusion during the different stages of the research. Finally, they should not blindly trust the output of a tool/software but do a benchmarking test for each of the tools which they decided to utilise in their research. In addition to this, even if the tools pass the benchmarking, researchers should have a good biological background in their field to tell if anything when wrong during the process by only looking the output(s) of the employed pipelines/packages/tools.  

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/8/10/248

Address of the bookmark: http://alienness.sophia.inra.fr/cgi/index.cgi

• the Gene Ontology (GO), which provides the logical structure of the biological functions (‘terms’) and their relationships to one another, manifested as a directed acyclic graph
• the corpus of GO annotations, evidence-based statements relating a specific gene product (a protein, non-coding RNA, or macromolecular complex, which we often refer to as ‘genes’ for simplicity) to a specific ontology term

Together, the ontology and annotations aim to describe a comprehensive model of biological systems. Currently, the GO knowledgebase includes experimental findings from over 140 000 published papers, represented as over 600 000 experimentally-supported GO annotations. These provide the core dataset for additional inference of over 6 million functional annotations for a diverse set of organisms spanning the tree of life.

In addition to this core knowledgebase, GOC resources also include software to edit and perform logical reasoning over the ontologies, web access to the ontology and annotations, and analytical tools that use the GO knowledgebase to support biomedical research.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.geneontology.org/

PANNZER2 processes bacterial proteomes in minutes and eukaryotic proteomes in an hour. You can use AAI-profiler to summarize a proteome's species neighbors and reveal taxonomic identity or contamination.

http://ekhidna2.biocenter.helsinki.fi/sanspanz/

IterPro is for the beginners

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/

You can find other comparative info at https://academic.oup.com/view-large/118391389

Address of the bookmark: http://ekhidna2.biocenter.helsinki.fi/sanspanz/

Please note that the CrowdGO snakemake workflow is currently only tested on Ubuntu. It should work on OSX, but please report any errors to maarten.reijnders@unil.ch or create an issue.

https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010075

Address of the bookmark: https://gitlab.com/mreijnders/crowdgo