GOfox: Semantics-based simplified hierarchical classification and interactive visualization to support GO enrichment analysis

Gene Ontology (GO)-based statistical enrichment analysis is a popular approach to identify statistically enriched biological processes, molecular functions, and cellular components that are associated with a list of genes. However, such GO enrichment analysis often generates a large number of enriched GO terms that are difficult to interpret and analyze. To address this issue, we developed GOfox, a web tool that utilizes OWL-based ontology semantics and RDF triple store SPARQL queries to generate full or simplified hierarchical GO subsets to classify and display enriched GO terms. GOfox integrates and extends features from OntoFox and Ontobee, two ontology tools developed in the laboratory. GOFox also includes a newly developed algorithm for generating simplified hierarchical classification by considering the multiple inheritance of GO. Furthermore, GOfox provides an interactive visualization that supports GO subset tree exploration and term editing. GOfox is freely available at the website: http://gofox.hegroup.org/.