Use of OWL within the Gene Ontology.

The Gene Ontology (GO) is a ubiquitous tool in biological data analysis, and is one of the most well-known ontologies, in or outside the life sciences. Commonly conceived of as a simple terminology structured as a directed acyclic graph, the GO is actually well-axiomatized in OWL and is highly dependent on the OWL tool stack. Here we outline some of the lesser known features of the GO, describe the GO development process, and our prognosis for future development in terms of the OWL representation.