title: Gene Ontology: looking backwards and forwards.
abstract: The Gene Ontology consortium began six years ago with a group of scientists who decided to connect our data by sharing the same language for describing it. Its most significant achievement lies in uniting many independent biological database efforts into a cooperative force.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, 539 Life Sciences Addition, Berkeley, CA 94720-3200, USA. suzi@fruitfly.org
authors.forename: Suzanna E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Lewis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D048088:Informatics / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends*; D020407:Internet; D012108:Research Personnel; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled