The GO ontology is structured as a directed acyclic graph, and each term has defined relationships to one or more other terms in the same domain, and sometimes to other domains. The GO vocabulary is designed to be species-neutral, and includes terms applicable to prokaryotes and eukaryotes, single and multicellular organisms. GO is not static, and additions, corrections and alterations are suggested by, and solicited from, members of the research and annotation communities, as well as by those directly involved in the GO project. For example, an annotator may request a specific term to represent a metabolic pathway, or a section of the ontology may be revised with the help of community experts (e.g.). Suggested edits are reviewed by the ontology editors, and implemented where appropriate. The GO ontology and annotation files are freely available from the GO website in a number of formats, or can be accessed online using the GO browser AmiGO. The Gene Ontology project also provides downloadable mappings of its terms to other classification systems. Example term id: GO:0000016 name: lactase activity ontology: molecular_function def: "Catalysis of the reaction: lactose + H2O=D-glucose + D-galactose." [EC:3.2.1.108] synonym: "lactase-phlorizin hydrolase activity" BROAD [EC:3.2.1.108] synonym: "lactose galactohydrolase activity" EXACT [EC:3.2.1.108] xref: EC:3.2.1.108 xref: MetaCyc:LACTASE-RXN xref: Reactome:20536 is_a: GO:0004553 ! hydrolase activity, hydrolyzing O-glycosyl compounds Data source: Annotation Genome annotation encompasses the practice of capturing data about a gene product, and GO annotations use terms from the GO to do so. Annotations from GO curators are integrated and disseminated on the GO website, where they can be downloaded directly or viewed online using AmiGO. In addition to the gene product identifier and the relevant GO term, GO annotations have at least the following data: The reference used to make the annotation (e.g. a journal article); An evidence code denoting the type of evidence upon which the annotation is based; The date and the creator of the annotation Supporting information, depending on GO term and evidence used and supplementary information, such as the conditions the function is observed under, may also be included in a GO annotation. The evidence code comes from a controlled vocabulary of codes, the Evidence Code Ontology, covering both manual and automated annotation methods. For example, Traceable Author Statement (TAS) means a curator has read a published scientific paper and the metadata for that annotation bears a citation to that paper; Inferred from Sequence Similarity (ISS) means