Improving the representation of immunology in the biological process Ontology

Alison Deckhut Augustine (1), Alan Collmer (2), Judith A. Blake (3, 4), Candace W. Collmer (2, 3), Shane C. Burgess (5), Lindsay Grey Cowell (6), Jennifer I. Clark (3, 7), Bernard de Bono (7), Russell T. Collins (8), Alexander D. Diehl (3, 4), Michelle Gwinn Giglio (3, 9), Jamie A. Lee (10), Linda Hannick (3, 9), Jane Lomax (3, 7), Midori A. Harris (3, 7), Christopher J. Mungall (3, 11), David P. Hill (3, 4), Richard H. Scheuermann (10), Amelia Ireland (3, 7), Alessandro Sette (12) (1. NIAID, 2. Cornell University, 3. The GO Consortium, 4. Mouse Genome Informatics, 5. Mississippi State University, 6. Duke University, 7. EMBL-EBI, 8. University of Cambridge, 9. The Institute for Genomic Research, 10. U.T. Southwestern Medical Center, 11. HHMI, 12. La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology); 2005

GO terms describing processes, functions, and cellular components related to the immune system have existed in the GO from its beginning and been used extensively in the annotation of gene products. However, particularly in the biological process ontology, the initial set of terms relating to immunology failed to cover the breadth of known immunological processes, and in many cases diverged from current usage and understanding in their names, definitions, and ontological placement. As part of a larger effort to improve the representation of immunology in the GO, a GO Content Meeting was held November 15-16, 2005, at The Institute for Genomic Research, to discuss improvements to representation of immunology in the biological process ontology of the GO. As a result of the meeting, a number of high level terms for immunological processes were created, an overall structure for immunologically related terms was established, and certain existing terms were renamed or redefined as well to bring them in line with current usage.