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.

The NeXO approach is described in the following publication:

A gene ontology inferred from molecular networks. Janusz Dutkowski, Michael Kramer, Michal A Surma, Rama Balakrishnan, J Michael Cherry, Nevan J Krogan & Trey Ideker. Nature Biotechnology 31, 38–45 (2013).

The Gene Ontology data sets used in this web application is maintained by The Gene Ontology Consortium:

Gene ontology: tool for the unification of biology. The Gene Ontology Consortium. Nat. Genet.. May 2000;25(1):25-9.