I have always found it problematic, when reading articles with far reaching conclusions on the basis of solely computation-based GO analysis which are not validaded and are based often on GOs of organisms phylogenetically far removed from the studied non-model species, to attach meaning to the conclusions. In view of this, it was interesting to read the paper by Friedrich et al. (2019) Bioessays 41, 4 article no. 1800169 on microRNA targets of especially non-model organisms, where they say for example "GO enrichment analyses, which are often performed on experimentally nonvalidated targets, are most likely meaningless". Why is it so common to do just this and thereby obscure getting real biological information? Is it just because it is relatively easy, and actually validating the target and the functional significance of the response is difficult?
Mikko Nikinmaa
I think to say whether a GO result is meaningful, it largely depend on your objectives and what your conclusion really about. Omics give us a clue for future more detail validation, and this clue may more possibly be correct. So, this should be a work which has two stages, one is bioinformatics, the other is those wet work. Both are necessary, while a combination of them could make perfect.
I do not say that the GO result is meaningless, what I am saying, it is meaningless without being tied to the biology of organism. Presently this is often forgotten.
Hi Mikko,
Or can we say that this technology is evoving?May in the coming days would this meaningful. It is quite true that the Omics data interpretation is rather hard, including to design a validation assay(my own opinion).
Certainly the technology is evolving, but the thing I worry about is that people think more of the technology than the biological questions. That has, unfortunately, become very common
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