NeXO

NeXO is a gene ontology inferred directly from large-scale molecular networks. A gene ontology provides structured knowledge about the cellular components, processes, and functions encoded by genes. While most ontologies – including the highly successful Gene Ontology Database (GO) – are constructed through manual expert curation, NeXO is a data-driven gene ontology inferred directly from ‘omics data. NeXO (The Network Extracted Ontology) uses a principled computational approach which integrates evidence from hundreds of thousands of individual gene and protein interactions to construct a complete hierarchy of cellular components and processes. This data-derived ontology aligns with known biological machinery in the GO Database and also uncovers many new structures.NeXO是直接从大规模分子网络推断得到的基因本体（Gene Ontology）。基因本体能够提供关于基因所编码的细胞组分、生物过程及分子功能的结构化知识。当前绝大多数本体（包括极具影响力的基因本体数据库（Gene Ontology Database，GO））均通过人工专家手动编校构建，而NeXO（即网络提取本体，Network Extracted Ontology）则是一种数据驱动的基因本体，直接从组学（’omics）数据中推断得到。NeXO采用一套严谨规范的计算方法，整合了数十万条单个基因与蛋白质相互作用的证据，以此构建出一套完整的细胞组分与生物过程层级结构。这款由数据衍生得到的本体不仅与GO数据库中已知的生物学机制高度契合，还发掘出了诸多全新的结构。