Gene ontology files

Gene ontology file formats: Files are available in the OBO, OWL and JSON formats. Three versions of the ontology are available as described below.

File Name  Description Download
.obo file		 Download
.json file		 Download
.owl file		  
go-basic The basic version of the GO, filtered so that the ontology is acyclic. With this version, annotations can safely be propagated up the graph. The relations included are is a, part of, regulates, negatively regulates and positively regulates. This version excludes relationships that cross the 3 GO hierarchies. This version is recommended for most GO-based annotation tools.  go-basic.obo file   go-basic.obo file NA  
go Core ontology. This version includes additional relationships compared to go-basic, including has_part and occurs_in. These relations can link terms from different aspects of GO and create cycles in the ontology, so not all the relations are safe for propagating annotations. This version excludes relationships to external ontologies. go.obo file   go.json file go.owl file  
go-plus This is the fully axiomatised version of the GO. It includes cross-ontology relationships (axioms) and imports additional required ontologies including ChEBI, Cell Ontology and Uberon. It also includes to complete set of relationship types including some not present in go. This version is only available in OWL format.  NA  NA  go-plus.owl file  

GO subset files

GO subsets (also known as GO slims) are condensed versions of the GO containing a reduced number of terms. They are specified by tags within the ontology that indicate if a given term is a member of a particular subset. GO subsets are used to provide a broad overview of the range of functions and processes relevant to a gene or a goup of genes. More information and links for downloading subsets be found on the Guide to GO subsets page.

Cross-references of GO to other classification systems

Many GO classes have cross-references (mappings) to a number of external classification systems. The cross-references of external classification systems to GO page contains more information and links to the cross-reference2GO files.

Snapshot editions

As of April 2019, the standard PURLs for GO will resolve to the monthly (release) version. We strongly recommend using the latest official release instead of snapshot. If you have need to access the snapshot (daily) version, use /snapshot/ in the URL. For example:

  • http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go/snapshot/go.obo
  • http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go/snapshot/go.owl
  • http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go/snapshot/extensions/go-plus.owl
  • OBO format tools in GitHub: a wrapper for the Java (OWL-API) implementation of a parser for OBOF1.4 syntax and an implementation of the OBOF1.4 mapping to OWL (uses the OWL API)
  • OWL API in Github: a Java API for creating, manipulating and serialising OWL Ontologies