Normally building a GODB is fairly complicated, involving downloading multiple database files and using these to build e.g. a mySQL
database. Accessing this database is also complicated, involving an intimate knowledge of the database in order to construct reliable queries. Here we have a more modest goal, generating GOGOA3, which is a stripped down version of the GODB that was originally restricted to human genes as designated by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) (see <https://geneontology.org/>). I have now added about two dozen additional species, namely all species represented on the Gene Ontology download page <https://current.geneontology.org/products/pages/downloads.html>. This covers most of the model organisms that are commonly used in bio-medical and basic research (assuming that anyone still has a grant to do such research). This can be built in a matter of seconds from 2 easily downloaded files (see <https://current.geneontology.org/products/pages/downloads.html> and <https://geneontology.org/docs/download-ontology/>), and it can be queried by e.g. w<-which(GOGOA3[,"HGNC"] %in% hgncList
) where GOGOA3 is a matrix representing the minimalist GODB and hgncList
is a list of gene identifiers. This database will be used in my upcoming package GoMiner
which is based on my previous publication (see Zeeberg, B.R., Feng, W., Wang, G. et al. (2003)<doi:10.1186/gb-2003-4-4-r28>). Relevant .RData files are available from GitHub
(<https://github.com/barryzee/GO/tree/main/databases>).