QuickGO browser view of the Gene Ontology (GO) biological process term ‘regulation of B-cell activation’ (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ego/GTerm?id=GO:0050864). The QuickGO record displays the GO term, identifier and definition along with ancestry information (a), child terms, proteins annotated to the GO term (b) and statistical data. The blue arrow and circle indicate the ‘protein annotation’ tab view option. (a) In the QuickGO ancestor graph, the term ‘regulation of B-cell activation’ is shown to be a child of the broader parent terms ‘regulation of lymphocyte activation’ and ‘B-cell activation’. (b) Only a few of the 125 proteins associated with ‘regulation of B-cell activation’ and its child terms are shown in this example.

Protein record page of the QuickGO browser, showing all annotations for the human vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) protein (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ego/GProtein?ac=P19320). The Gene Ontology (GO) terms associated with the VCAM-1 protein record were derived from only six of the thousands of VCAM1 publications. It is unlikely that the annotation of any highly studied gene will ever be completed, as new publications are available each week. However, for this protein the addition of annotations extracted from a few more key publications would enable the GO curators to increase substantially the number and quality of annotations. The QuickGO protein record page displays a short summary of the chosen UniProtKB protein accession number, together with its associated GO annotations. The evidence column (Ev) displays the acronym of the GO evidence code used to categorize the type of evidence that has been found to support the association of the GO term with the protein. Seventeen different evidence codes can be used to categorize the type of evidence available to support the annotation, one of which (IEA) is use to indicate an ‘electronic’ source for the annotation; the remaining 16 are all used for manually curated annotations. The ‘from’ column lists an acronym for the database accredited for the annotation. Additional supporting data for the annotation, such as a GO:ID or InterPro domain is listed in the ‘with’ column. Hyperlinks on this page enable users to retrieve the paper supporting the annotation and to view the information available for other database identifiers.

Wiki pages available at the Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) immunology Wiki site. (a) Immunology Wiki index page (http://wiki.geneontology.org/index.php/Immunology), an index for the 1326 high-priority genes associated with the immune system, is available at the bottom of this page. While there is full public access to this site, scientists interested in commenting on the annotation of a gene will need to create an account by completing a short form (link to account page is circled in red). (b) Each of the immune-associated genes has an individual Wiki page with hyperlinks (in blue) to a variety of external sites (http://wiki.geneontology.org/index.php/ICAM1). The ‘Community Input Section’ is highlighted in yellow, with the link to the editing page (c) circled in red. (c) Information can be submitted to the Gene Ontology (GO) curators by adding comments to the ‘community input section’ in a gene record and using the ‘save page’ option (circled in red, http://wiki.geneontology.org/index.php?title=ICAM1&action=edit&section=3).