
Chapter 27
ID Mapping issues
That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the
language of the whole world.
—Genesis 11:9
27.1 Introduction
Gene annotations databases are widely used as public repositories of biolog-
ical knowledge.
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Understanding the results of almost any molecular biology
experiment involves consulting such annotation databases. Our current knowl-
edge is spread out over a number of databas e s (DBs), such as: Entrez Gene
[294], UniProt [29], Protein Data Bank [47], RefSeq [344], RGD, SGD, Worm-
Base, and Gene Ontology (GO) [25], to name just a few. Many such databases
1
Some of the material in this chapter is reprinted ...