[Ontology-editors] draft cross-product announcement email

[Midori Harris]

Hi,

This is my first draft of an email to GO friends about adding xps to the 
go_ext file. It could use some reasons why xps are wonderful (there's 
a placeholder right now); other edits welcome too.

m

subject:
Announcement: Introduction of cross-product definitions in extended GO 
([date])

body:
Dear GO Friends,

We are pleased to announce that we are about to introduce cross-product 
definitions, in the form of intersection_of tags, into the "extended" 
version of GO (ontology/obo_format_1_2/gene_ontology_ext.obo). The target 
date for this addition is [date].

This addition may have considerable impact on your tools and analyses 
because:

  1. Loading scripts that use gene_ontology_ext.obo will need to be 
modified to take the intersection_of tags into account by [date].
  2. GO analysis tools that use gene_ontology_ext.obo will need to be 
modified to take the intersection_of tags into account by [date].
  3. Some intersection_of tags will use new relationship types that will 
not be used elsewhere in the GO, and scripts and tools will have to be 
modified to take these new relationship types into account.

The first cross-products in GO will be "internal"; that is, they reference 
only terms within the GO. For example, the Biological Process (BP) 
ontology term "regulation of mitotic recombination" references two other 
BP terms, "biological regulation" and "mitotic recombination". Internal 
cross-products may also link branches of the GO, as in 
"nucleotide-excision repair complex", a Cellular Component (CC) term that 
references a CC term ("protein complex") and a BP term 
("nucleotide-excision repair").

[reasons for xps]

The principles of cross-products are documented at:

[linky]

The intersection_of tag is documented in the OBO Format specifications:

http://www.geneontology.org/GO.format.obo-1_2.shtml

Please let us know if you have questions or comments about this plan.

On behalf of the GO Consortium,
[name(s)]