Whereas gene nomenclature focuses on gene and gene products, the Gene Ontology focuses on the function of the genes and gene products
The Gene Ontology (GO) provides a system for hierarchically classifying genes or gene products into terms organized in a graph structure (or an ontology). ... Using the GO it is possible to retrieve the set of terms used to describe any gene, or conversely, given a term, return the set of genes annotated to that term.
GO最大的功能是提供这样一张结构图