BackgroundGenome-wide gene function annotations are useful for hypothesis generation and for prioritizing candidate genes responsible for phenotypes of interest. We functionally annotated the genes of 18 crop plant genomes across 14 species using the GOMAP pipeline.ResultsBy comparison to existing GO annotation datasets available for a subset of these genomes, GOMAP-generated datasets cover more genes, assign more GO terms, and produce datasets similar in quality (based on precision and recall metrics using existing gold standards as the basis for comparison). From there, we sought to determine whether the datasets could be used in tandem to carry out comparative functional genomics analyses. As a test of the idea and a proof of concept, we created parsimony and distance-based dendrograms of relatedness based on functions for all 18 genomes. These dendrograms were compared to well-established species-level phylogenies to determine whether trees derived through the analysis of gene function agree with known evolutionary histories, which they largely do. Where discrepancies were observed, we determined branch support based on jack-knifing then removed individual annotation sets by genome to identify the annotation sets causing errant relationships.ConclusionsBased on the results of these analyses, it is clear that for genome assembly and annotation products of similar quality, GOMAP-derived functional annotations used together across species do retain sufficient biological signal to recover known phylogenetic relationships, indicating that comparative functional genomics across species based on GO data hold promise as a tool for generating novel hypotheses about gene function and traits.
Comparative functional genomics analysis of bHLH gene family in rice, maize and wheat
