Automatic consistency assurance for literature-based gene ontology annotation

Abstract

Background: Literature-based gene ontology (GO) annotation is a process where expert curators use uniform expressions to describe gene functions reported in research papers, creating computable representations of information about biological systems. Manual assurance of consistency between GO annotations and the associated evidence texts identified by expert curators is reliable but time-consuming, and is infeasible in the context of rapidly growing biological literature. A key challenge is maintaining consistency of existing GO annotations as new studies are published and the GO vocabulary is updated. Results: In this work, we introduce a formalisation of biological database annotation inco..