SourceForge meeting 2014-04-23

Attendees:

Extracellular vesicle terms

See email thread "GO and vesicle nomenclature"

flocculation & aggregation - cell-cell adhesion, or process mediated by cell-cell adhesion ?

https://sourceforge.net/p/geneontology/ontology-requests/10773/

Currently flocculation is a process resulting in formation of aggregates (flocs) of single celled organism that is mediated by cell-cell adhesion. Related cell adhesion terms have a part of relationship to flocculation terms. Val would prefer it to be a type of cell-cell adhesion. I can see the case for keeping two types of terms. While probably most or all annotations should probably be to the adhesion terms, it is certainly possible to imagine other components to floc formation, such as cell communication (important to keep these open if we want broad applicability for these terms. The adhesion processes themselves are also likely to occur at low levels in the absence of floc formation (e.g. if cultures are insufficiently dense).

OTOH, we are not very consistent about this, as other terms for types of aggregation, e.g. 'Type IV pili-dependent aggregation' GO:0052000, are types of cell adhesion.