The Gene Ontology Consortium has released a detailed guide to over 20,000 human genes that make proteins. The Consortium is funded by the National Institutes of Health and includes researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at USC, the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and other places.

The researchers built a website where anyone can search this guide.

The researchers used evolutionary modeling to look at how genes changed over time across humans and animals like mice and fish. A paper published in Nature describe this study.

The Gene Ontology is a knowledge base that’s been growing for over 25 years. Scientists use it a lot: over 30,000 studies yearly rely on it. The knowledge base assists “omics” studies that look at DNA, RNA, proteins, and other stuff in cells all at once. For example, a scientist might find genes acting differently in cancer cells. Checking thousands of papers for each gene’s role is too hard. So, scientists use this knowledge base instead.

This tool turns gene lists into clear biological stories. Sometimes, it even hints at new treatments. The latest update makes it stronger by adding evolutionary clues. It mixes human gene data with animal gene data. This fills gaps where human studies are missing.

The new resource covers 82% of protein-coding genes

Over 150 biologists worldwide helped build this resource. Since 1998, they’ve read over 175,000 papers. They sorted genes by their tasks, like cell division or immune defense, using a list of over 40,000 functions. The new resource, called the PAN-GO functionome, covers 82% of protein-coding genes. For the rest – about 3,600 genes – no data exists yet. According to the researchers, this shows where future research should go.

Scientists can now use this tool with computers and artificial intelligence (AI), to dig into data fast. Users can and should suggest updates via the website. This keeps the guide fresh and useful. The researchers are persuaded that, tough not perfect, this is the best map of human gene functions so far.

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