The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Gene Ontology and the Meaning of Biological Function
Open accessAbstract
The Gene Ontology (GO) provides a framework and set of concepts for describing the functions of gene products from all organisms. It is specifically designed for supporting the computational representation of biological systems. A GO annotation is an association between a specific gene product and a GO concept, together making a statement pertinent to the function of that gene. However, the meaning of the term "function" is not as straightforward as it might seem, and has been discussed at length in both philosophical and biological circles. Here, I first review these discussions. I then present an explicit formulation of the biological model that underlies the GO and annotations, and discuss how this model relates to the broader debates on the meaning of biological function.
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Cites
Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology
Ashburner, M., Ball, C. A., Blake, J. A., Botstein, D., Butler, H., Cherry, J. M., Davis, A. P., Dolinski, K., Dwight, S. S., Eppig, J. T., et al. (2000) · Nature Genetics · doi:10.1038/75556 · Cited by 43,206
Wright, L. (1973) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.2307/2183766 · Cited by 983
Monod, J. (1974) · Studies in the Philosophy of Biology · doi:10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_20 · Cited by 967
Cited by
The Gene Ontology Resource: 20 years and still GOing strong
The Gene Ontology Consortium (2019) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/gky1055 · Cited by 4,747
Phan, A., Joshi, P., Kadelka, C., & Friedberg, I. (2025) · Database · doi:10.1093/database/baaf036 · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Thomas, P. D.
- Venue
- Methods in Molecular Biology
- Publisher
- Springer New York
- Published
- 2016-11-04
- Volume
- 1446
- Pages
- 15-24
- ISSN
- 1064-3745 (ISSN-L)
- 1940-6029
- OpenAlex
- W2547565465
- Cited by
- 349
- References
- 3
- FWCI
- 11.16
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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