Download the ontology
Files are available in the following formats:
- OBO 1.4: human- and machine-readable; can be opened in any text editor
- OWL: can be opened with Protégé.
- Three versions of the ontology are available, as described below.
| Name | Description | Permanent URL | Download link |
|---|---|---|---|
| go-basic.obo | The basic version of the GO, filtered such that the graph is guaranteed to be acyclic and annotations can 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 should be used with most GO-based annotation tools. | http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go/go-basic.obo | Download go-basic.obo file |
| go.obo & go.owl | Core ontology. This view includes relationships not in the filtered version of GO including has_part and occurs_in. Many of these relationships may not be safe for propagating annotations across, so this version should not be used with legacy GO tools. This version excludes relationships to external ontologies. | http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go.obo / http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go.owl | Download go.obo file / Download go.owl file |
| go-plus.owl | 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 a complete set of relationship types including some not in go.obo/go.owl. This version is only available in OWL format. | http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/go/extensions/go-plus.owl | Download go-plus.owl file |
Download GO subsets
-
GO subsets (also known as GO slims) are condensed versions of the GO containing a subset of the 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 particularly useful for providing a broad overview of the range of functions and processes. More information cal be found on the Guide to GO subsets page.
- The files available below for download are generated by script from that file.
- GO subsets (slims) are available in OBO. OWL as as well as JSON; JSON files should be loaded with ontobio, although they can be opened with any text editor.
| Subset name | Maintainer | File name | OBO format | OWL format | json format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alliance of Genome Resources subset | Developed by GO Consortium for the Alliance of Genomes Resources | goslim_agr | obo | owl | json |
| Generic GO subset | GO Consortium | goslim_generic | obo | owl | json |
| Aspergillus subset | Aspergillus Genome Data | goslim_aspergillus | obo | owl | json |
| Candida albicans subset | Candida Genome Database | goslim_candida | obo | owl | json |
| Drosophila subset | FlyBase | goslim_drosophila | obo | owl | json |
| Chembl Drug Target subset | ChEMBL | goslim_chembl | obo | owl | json |
| Metagenomics subset | InterPro group | goslim_metagenomic | obo | owl | json |
| Mouse GO subset | Mouse Genome Informatics | goslim_mouse | obo | owl | json |
| Plant subset | The Arabidopsis Information Resource | goslim_plant | obo | owl | json |
| Prokaryote subset | GO Consortium | goslim_prokaryote | obo | owl | json |
| Protein Information Resource subset | PIR | goslim_pir | obo | owl | json |
| Schizosaccharomyces pombe subset | PomBase | goslim_pombe | obo | owl | json |
| Yeast subset | Saccharomyces Genome Database | goslim_yeast | obo | owl | json |
Download GO “anti-slims”
For internal checking purposes, GO maintains two “anti-slims”, terms to which annotations should not be made. “Anti-slim” terms should never be used when creating a subset.
| Subset name | Usage | File name | OBO format | OWL format | json format |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do not annotate | The set of high level terms that are useful for grouping, but should have no direct annotations | gocheck_do_not_annotate | obo | owl | json |
Cross-references of GO to other classification systems
Many GO classes have been cross-referenced (mapped) 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
Related tools
- 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