Gene-oriented ortholog database: a functional comparison platform for orthologous loci

The accumulation of complete genomic sequences enhances the need for functional annotation. Associating existing functional annotation of orthologs can speed up the annotation process and even examine the existing annotation. However, current protein sequence-based ortholog databases provide ambiguous and incomplete orthology in eukaryotes. It is because that isoforms, derived by alternative splicing (AS), often share higher sequence similarity to interfere the sequence-based identification. Gene-Oriented Ortholog Database (GOOD) employs genomic locations of transcripts to cluster AS-derived isoforms prior to ortholog delineation to eliminate the interference from AS. From the gene-oriented presentation, isoforms can be clearly associated to their genes to provide comprehensive ortholog information and further be discriminated from paralogs. Aside from, displaying clusters of isoforms between orthologous genes can present the evolution variation at the transcription level. Based on orthology, GOOD additionally comprises functional annotation from the Gene Ontology (GO) database. However, there exist redundant annotations, both parent and child terms assigned to the same gene, in the GO database. It is difficult to precisely draw the numerical comparison of term counts between orthologous genes annotated with redundant terms. Instead of the description only, GOOD further provides the GO graphs to reveal hierarchical-like relationships among divergent functionalities. Therefore, the redundancy of GO terms can be examined, and the context among compared terms is more comprehensive. In sum, GOOD can improve the interpretation in the molecular function from experiments in the model organism and provide clear comparative genomic annotation across organisms. Database URL: http://goods.ibms.sinica.edu.tw/goods/