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Abstract Advances in agricultural genetic, genomic, and breeding (GGB) technologies generate increasingly large and complex datasets that need to be adequately managed and shared. While several agricultural biological databases maintain and curate GGB data, not all scientists are aware of them and how they can be used to access and share data. In addition, there is the need to increase scientists’ awareness that appropriate data archiving and curation increases data longevity and value and bolsters scientific discoveries’ reproducibility and transparency. The AgBioData Education working group aims to address these unmet needs and developed a modular curriculum for educators teaching the basics of biological databases and the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles to undergraduate and graduate students (https://www.agbiodata.org/). The present paper provides an overview of the topics covered within the curriculum, called ‘AgBioData Curriculum for Ag FAIR Data,’ its audience and modalities, and how it will positively impact all the different stakeholders of the agricultural database ecosystem. We hope the modular curriculum presented here can help scientists and students understand and support database use in all aspects of improving our global food system. Database URL: https://zenodo.org/records/14278084 

Abstract We aim to enable the accurate and efficient transfer of knowledge about gene function gained fromArabidopsis thalianaand other model organisms to other plant species. This knowledge transfer is frequently challenging in plants due to duplications of individual genes and whole genomes in plant lineages. Such duplications result in complex evolutionary relationships between related genes, which may have similar sequences but highly divergent functions. In such cases, functional inference requires more than a simple sequence similarity calculation. We have developed an online resource, PhyloGenes (phylogenes.org), that displays precomputed phylogenetic trees for plant gene families along with experimentally validated function information for individual genes within the families. A total of 40 plant genomes and 10 non‐plant model organisms are represented in over 8,000 gene families. Evolutionary events such as speciation and duplication are clearly labeled on gene trees to distinguish orthologs from paralogs. Nearly 6,000 families have at least one member with an experimentally supported annotation to a Gene Ontology (GO) molecular function or biological process term. By displaying experimentally validated gene functions associated to individual genes within a tree, PhyloGenes enables functional inference for genes of uncharacterized function, based on their evolutionary relationships to experimentally studied genes, in a visually traceable manner. For the many families containing genes that have evolved to perform different functions, PhyloGenes facilitates the use of evolutionary history to determine the most likely function of genes that have not been experimentally characterized. Future work will enrich the resource by incorporating additional gene function datasets such as plant gene expression atlas data. 

Abstract The Gene Ontology (GO) knowledgebase (http://geneontology.org) is a comprehensive resource concerning the functions of genes and gene products (proteins and noncoding RNAs). GO annotations cover genes from organisms across the tree of life as well as viruses, though most gene function knowledge currently derives from experiments carried out in a relatively small number of model organisms. Here, we provide an updated overview of the GO knowledgebase, as well as the efforts of the broad, international consortium of scientists that develops, maintains, and updates the GO knowledgebase. The GO knowledgebase consists of three components: (1) the GO—a computational knowledge structure describing the functional characteristics of genes; (2) GO annotations—evidence-supported statements asserting that a specific gene product has a particular functional characteristic; and (3) GO Causal Activity Models (GO-CAMs)—mechanistic models of molecular “pathways” (GO biological processes) created by linking multiple GO annotations using defined relations. Each of these components is continually expanded, revised, and updated in response to newly published discoveries and receives extensive QA checks, reviews, and user feedback. For each of these components, we provide a description of the current contents, recent developments to keep the knowledgebase up to date with new discoveries, and guidance on how users can best make use of the data that we provide. We conclude with future directions for the project. 

Abstract The Gene Ontology Consortium (GOC) provides the most comprehensive resource currently available for computable knowledge regarding the functions of genes and gene products. Here, we report the advances of the consortium over the past two years. The new GO-CAM annotation framework was notably improved, and we formalized the model with a computational schema to check and validate the rapidly increasing repository of 2838 GO-CAMs. In addition, we describe the impacts of several collaborations to refine GO and report a 10% increase in the number of GO annotations, a 25% increase in annotated gene products, and over 9,400 new scientific articles annotated. As the project matures, we continue our efforts to review older annotations in light of newer findings, and, to maintain consistency with other ontologies. As a result, 20 000 annotations derived from experimental data were reviewed, corresponding to 2.5% of experimental GO annotations. The website (http://geneontology.org) was redesigned for quick access to documentation, downloads and tools. To maintain an accurate resource and support traceability and reproducibility, we have made available a historical archive covering the past 15 years of GO data with a consistent format and file structure for both the ontology and annotations.