Investigation of Semantic Similarity as a Tool for Comparative Genomics

摘要

The project sets out to investigate the concept of semantic similarity between individual and collections of gene products based on functional descriptors such as “Gene Ontology” (GO) annotations. Different existing concepts for quantifying semantic similarity are implemented into a basic “Semantic Similarity Calculator” and the resulting tool applied to assess its utility in different biological contexts. It is discussed what kinds of problems were encountered during the implementation of the prototype, and how these problems were addressed, or are planned to be addressed in the future. An overview over future work is given.