Generation of 12 major-terms for interpretating human cellular processes

As the Gene Ontology (GO) knowledgebase becomes more and more complicated, it is difficult for researchers to follow and get a comprehensive overview of cellular processes. Here, we developed a classification strategy by systematically investigating shared genes between any two terms. Using this strategy, we streamlined the 66 direct child terms of human cellular processes to 12 <i>major-terms</i>, and the interactions were further validated using protein-protein interaction networks. We subsequently applied these 12 <i>major-terms</i> to investigate the distribution of transcription factors, kinases, and several cancer genomes, and also compared our framework with other GO term redundancy reduction tools. To facilitate its usage, we provide a web-based tool. Importantly, these 12 GO <i>major-terms</i> provide researchers with a more comprehensive overview of cellular processes, and also serve as an effective tool for enrichment analysis.