gene-ontology-three-sub-ontologies

Summary

Gene Ontology breaks gene annotations into three distinct axes — what process the gene participates in, what molecular job it performs, and where in the cell it operates — and similarity between two genes is scored separately on each axis before the three numbers are folded into a single combined figure. For the system, this means any reasoning that depends on "how similar are these genes" is really resting on a three-part calculation, and a change or gap in just one sub-ontology will shift the final similarity score even if the other two are unchanged.