GoMapMan: integration, consolidation and visualization of plant gene annotations within the MapMan ontology

GoMapMan (http://www.gomapman.org) is an open web-accessible resource for gene functional annotations in the plant sciences. It was developed to facilitate improvement, consolidation and visualization of gene annotations across several plant species. GoMapMan is based on the MapMan ontology, organized in the form of a hierarchical tree of biological concepts, which describe gene functions. Currently, genes of the model species Arabidopsis and three crop species (potato, tomato and rice) are included. The main features of GoMapMan are (i) dynamic and interactive gene product annotation through various curation options; (ii) consolidation of gene annotations for different plant species through the integration of orthologue group information; (iii) traceability of gene ontology changes and annotations; (iv) integration of external knowledge about genes from different public resources; and (v) providing gathered information to high-throughput analysis tools via dynamically generated export files. All of the GoMapMan functionalities are openly available, with the restriction on the curation functions, which require prior registration to ensure traceability of the implemented changes.