Gene Ontology annotation status of the fission yeast genome: preliminary coverage approaches 100%

Abstract

In this review, we present an overview of the Gene Ontology (GO) structure and describe how the GO is implemented for Sz. pombe and made available via Sz. pombe GeneDB (http://www.genedb.org/genedb/pombe/). We give a detailed progress report of Sz. pombe GO annotation, providing the current status of both manual and automatic annotations. Fission yeast has at least one GO annotation for 98.3% of its genes (excluding annotations to 'unknown' terms), greater than the current percentage coverage for any other organism. Approximately 65% (3225 gene products) have at least one annotation to each of the three ontologies (biological process, cellular component and molecular function). Approximately 30% (1443 gene products) have GO terms derived directly from small-scale experiments in fission yeast, supporting the validity of fission yeast as a model eukaryote and a reference organism.