dcGO is a comprehensive ontology database for protein domains. As an ontology resource, dcGO integrates Open Biomedical Ontologies from a variety of contexts, ranging from functional information like Gene Ontology to others on enzymes and pathways, from phenotype information across major model organisms to information about human diseases and drugs. As a protein domain resource, dcGO includes annotations to both the individual domains and supra-domains (i.e., combinations of two or more successive domains).

There are two key concepts behind dcGO. The first concept is to label protein domains with ontology, for example, with Gene Ontology. That is why it is called dcGO, domain-centric Gene Ontology. The second concept is to use ontology-labeled protein domains for, for example, protein function prediction. Put it in a simple way, the first concept is about how to create dcGO resource, and the second concept is about how to use dcGO resource.

Recent use of dcGO is to build a domain network from a functional perspective for cross-ontology comparisons, and to combine with species tree of life (sTOL) to provide a phylogenetic context to function and phenotype.

Open-source software dcGOR is developed using R programming language to analyse domain-centric ontologies and annotations. Supported analyses include:

Functionalities under active development are: